A Strange and Bittersweet Romance
by Lia06
Summary: Gregory Fenton and Meghan Walsh are the Romeo and Juliet of the political world. He writes one of the premier Republican blogs while she is the daughter of one of the most powerful Democrat senators. Modernized Persuasion
1. Chapter 1

A/N: This is a modernized _Persuasion_. This is the story that Anna Eliot was writing in _Much More Than a Fairy Tale_. I don't own _Persuasion_.

Summary: Gregory Fenton and Meghan Walsh are the Romeo and Juliet of the political world. He writes one of the premier Republican blogs while she is the daughter of one of the most powerful Democrat senators. Modernized Persuasion

Rating: T for language and themes

Chapter One

* * *

To have met Gregory Fenton was an honor and a shock. Most Americans are familiar with Gregory's weekly column, Vox Populi. It was published every Tuesday on his website, and in various conservative newspapers. All I knew about Gregory was that my dad, like most Democrats, abhorred him. And his picture next to the column was of a young, good-looking man. He had bright blue yes and wavy brown hair. His face may have been too angular, as my young sister Rebecca, the future CNN political analyst of the family liked to comment. Rebecca knew plenty about men and politics. Daddy never knew about the relationships she carried on with other senators' aides behind his back. But that's not my point. We can talk about Becca later. Right now we're here to talk about Gregory J. Fenton. He was an angular, tall, skinny man. But there was something appealing about his eyes, and his smile. But when your father has been a Senator for 27 years, men from the other side of the aisle are off-limits.

I'd been secretly reading Gregory's column during my second year of college. It was the spring before the famous Bush-Gore election of 2000. I was moved by what his young lawyer from Connecticut was saying and while I might not agree with everything he said, he definitely had an impact on my political beliefs. And so in November of my junior year at Notre Dame, I filled in the box for Ross Perot. My father was Senator James Jefferson Walsh, Democrat from Illinois, and I could never vote for a Republican. But Gregory Fenton had convinced me that I could never vote for Al Gore. And I did something rebellious, for the first time in my life. So I kept reading Vox Populi.

Four years later, the fall of the Bush-Kerry election, I was standing in front of my first grade classroom greeting my new students. And there he was; Gregory Fenton was walking towards me holding the hand of a little girl wearing a bright red dress. And then he spoke to me. "This is Audrey Murphy."

I bent down to her level. "Hi, Audrey," I said, reaching my hand out to shake her small one. "My name is Miss Walsh and I'm going to be your teacher this year."

"Do you have chocolate milk?" Audrey asked as she shook my hand.

"Audrey!" Gregory Fenton exclaimed to his maybe daughter.

"Sorry, Uncle Greg," she whispered. Then, louder, she said to me, "I really like chocolate milk, I can read Curious George, and I know how to count to 100."

"Audrey really likes to talk, Miss Walsh," the uncle said. Then he extended his hand to me. "I'm Gregory Fenton, Audrey's uncle. I'm helping watch Audrey for a couple of days."

"My mommy just had a baby!" the niece pronounced. "She's a girl and her name is Katharine Elizabeth. I also have a brother named James. He's three and he's having breakfast with Nana Fenton while Uncle Greg takes me to school."

"That's exciting, I replied as Gregory grimaced. "Don't worry, Mr. Fenton. Most girls this age talk my wear off the first day of school."

"See, Uncle Greg? I'm normal!" Audrey exclaimed as her uncle smiled the same amazing smile that sat next to his column every Tuesday.

"I think you'll find Audrey will talk your ear off every day of the year," he told me.

She pulled on his arm. "Uncle Greg, can you leave now? I want to play with the other girls."

He smiled and kissed her cheek. "I'll see you after school, okay?"

Audrey nodded and hugged him. "Good-bye, Uncle Greg. Have a good day."

"You too, bella," he said. "I love you."

She ran into the classroom and he smiled. "She's growing up too fast."

I laughed. "It happens to all of us. It was nice meeting you, Mr. Fenton."

"Please, call me Greg," he replied. "And it was nice meeting you too, Miss Walsh."

"It's Meghan," I said with a smile. "And I suppose I'll see you at three o'clock."

"I'll see you then," he said with the same amazing smile before walking away.

* * *

I spent that day with thirty rowdy first-graders. Some of them wouldn't stop talking and others wouldn't start. But that was what the first day of first grade was like. Some of them were afraid to ask permission to go to the bathroom and barely made it there when I figured out what was going on. But after a few years teaching first grade, I've become aware of the ways little kids will do when they want attention or they need to pee. They were rowdy and energetic but they were so much fun. Sometimes it was hard to get them to behave, but it was worth it. As a teacher you could easily tell which kids were spoiled brats and ran the show at home. You could tell which kids were well-disciplined and which ones weren't. People who had been teaching longer than I had said you could even learn to tell which kids came from dysfunctional homes just by their behavior. I wasn't that good yet. But I was getting pretty good at telling where kids fell in the family order. Oldest children were always extremely confident. Only children were used to having everyone cater to their every whim. Middle children were used to being overlooked or put upon. Youngest children were either incredibly wise or extremely spoiled. And then there were some kids who defied those stereotypes. But in general, they worked. Audrey Murphy definitely acted like a typical oldest child with her confident, commanding personality.

* * *

Meeting Meghan Walsh was a shock. I was fairly familiar with Senator James Walsh of Illinois. He had been a Democratic senator from Illinois for 27 years. While claiming to be devoutly Roman Catholic, Walsh was so liberal that his conservative rating with three percent. Walsh has four children and two stepchildren. His first wife, Maureen Conley, had died of breast cancer shortly before their fifteenth wedding anniversary. He had remarried about six years later, to British writer Ellen Parker-Daniels, who was divorced from her first husband with whom she had two children. I also knew that Walsh's biological children were Connor, Meghan, Rebecca, and Benjamin. Ellen's children were Jillian and Natasha. You saw pictures of the gorgeous, smiling family every time Walsh won an election or was making a public appearance where it would be good to have his photogenic family behind him. I knew that Meghan was a teacher while most of her siblings were involved in politics in some way, shape, or form; I'd heard far too many speeches in the past year or two that involved the line "My daughter, Meghan, is a teacher in Chicago and she says…" I also knew that Meghan was always towards the back of the photos of the smiling Walsh family.

And then one day I had to drop my niece, Audrey, off for her first day of school. My older sister, Michelle, had just given birth to a baby and so needed some help with her children. When I dropped Audrey off at the school, I learned that her (very pretty) teacher's name was Meghan Walsh. I wasn't sure if she was the senator's daughter but she was gorgeous. She had beautiful dark brown hair that hung down to her shoulders and bright green eyes.

* * *

When I picked Audrey up that first afternoon, I had to go back to the classroom again. Miss Walsh was waiting with numerous six-year-olds running around her. On her desk, there was a small glass vase filled with dandelions. The next thing I knew there was a red blur flying at my legs screaming, "Uncle Greg!"

"Hi, Audrey," I said, stroking my niece's head. "How was your first day of school?"

"I like Miss Walsh. She smells like sugar cookies and you should marry her."

I laughed as the supposedly sugar-cookie scented woman in question approached us. "Audrey was an angel today," she told me with a bright smile. And that lively smile was what inspired me to ask Miss Walsh for her phone number while my niece ran to get her Little Mermaid backpack. I'm not sure what her inspiration was, but before I left that room I had a pink post-it note with "Meghan Walsh 708-555-3016; Call after 6pm" written on it.

* * *

I waited a day before I called her. I'm not sure that was intentional but whatever. But she answered the phone and three days later we met for coffee. We hit it off right away. We both ordered a tall caramel macchiato and a blueberry muffin. And it was history from there. We had so much more in common than I could have ever imagined. She was Senator James Walsh's daughter, but she wasn't like him. "My older brother, Connor, is a registered member of the Republican party," she told me. "And I'm following in his footsteps."

"Have you registered yet?"

She shook her head. "I'm still working on exploring the beliefs of the party. I'm not going to just jump ship on my dad without exploring the new ship."

"That's reasonable. After all, you were raised as the poster child for the perfect Democrat family."

"Yeah, we lived in a mansion and summered on the Costa del Sol or the French Riviera," she snipped back. She ran a hand through her dark brown hair and smiled. "Dad loves making people think that he's such a great man of the people, but he really has no clue what life is like for his constituency."

"Does Senator Walsh know that you feel this way?" I asked her.

"Are you asking as a friend or as the author of your blog?"

"Smart girl," I replied with a smile. "I'm just a curious friend. I'm taking a break from picking on Senator Walsh so I can expose CNN and their biased reporting."

"Intriguing," she replied. "I'd like to read that one."

"It's going to be a multi-part series. It'll be on my blog."

"Very interesting," she replied.

I smiled. "So back to my original question, does Senator Walsh know about your feelings about his relationship with his constituency?"

She laughed. "Of course not; I'm not stupid. I know what to tell my dad and what not to tell him. You have to be careful with his ego and stuff."

"Feeding the senator's ego," I remarked. "That could make an interesting column."

She covered her face with her hands and sighed. "He would try to have you destroyed."

"I'm not afraid of him," I told her.

"Ah, but I am," she replied. "And I don't trust him."

"Well, he's a politician. Lots of people distrust politicians."

Meghan laughed. "But how many people distrust their parents?"

* * *

I didn't always distrust my dad. When I was a little girl, my dad was a warm, friendly person who loved spending time with his kids. He was a politician but he always put his kids first. There's a picture someplace of him at the Democratic National Convention giving a speech while holding Rebecca. Back then, the smiling family photos weren't perfect. There was a photo taken in the late eighties; I can't remember why it was taken but Rebecca has chocolate all over her face and Dad is just laughing. Connor's hair was a mess and I was clinging to Mom because I was scared of the cameras. And my mom was holding a sick and screaming baby Benjamin. But my dad didn't complain. I remember him telling us at the time that he was just happy that he had his family with him, supporting him.

Then when I was eleven, almost twelve, my mom died slowly and painfully of cancer. When Mom died, Dad completely changed. The fun loving family man became a workaholic his focus was always on politics and pleasing his constituency. His children slipped into the background. We were dragged out for photo ops and to remind voters that he was a father and a widower. He used us time and again to play the sympathy card. When I was eighteen, Dad married Ellen Parker-Daniels and I acquired a stepmother and two younger stepsisters. Ellen paid attention to her four new stepchildren but for Connor, the damage had already been done. Connor was twenty and a junior at Notre Dame and I was starting my freshman year there. Rebecca and Benjamin were still living at home and bonded more with Ellen and her daughters, Jillian and Natasha. But Dad was still struggling to be a good dad. Politics had consumed his life. He lived most of the year in the Beltway while Ellen lived in Chicago most of the year. She was from England but Dad wanted her to live in the U.S. as much as possible to ensure American voters that he and his family were committed to them.

Connor rediscovered Catholicism while at Notre Dame and decided that he'd had it with Dad's pick-and-choose Catholicism. Instead, he threw himself into conservative Catholicism with a passion I'd never seen in him up to that point. My older brother moved to New York after he graduated from ND and went to law school. And then he joined the Republican Party. There was an article about his "jumping ship" in _Time_ magazine, if you can believe that. And we had five thousand family arguments about it. My dad liked to send out family emails after elections asking us all who had voted for. Connor, who wasn't afraid of my dad, always told the truth. I told the truth but tried to delay telling him how conservative I was becoming as long as possible; the year I voted for Ross Perot I told the truth. He sent back an angry email expounding upon the so-called "virtues" of Al Gore. In a rare fit of courage, I replied to tell him he couldn't tell me who to vote for. We had an email fight that became verbal at Thanksgiving dinner. Thankfully, my stepmother intervened and told him to let his children live their own lives.

I grew further and further from my father as I grew up. I didn't mind terribly but I think Ellen did. She wanted to keep our family together as much as possible. So I talked to my siblings. And Connor and I were as close as ever. But Dad and I grew apart as I grew older and developed more of my own thoughts and opinions. It got to the point where we barely spoke at family events except to exchange simple pleasantries. But my stepmother was glad that we were all at least speaking. Connor and I grew more and more alike. I grew closer to Jill and Tasha as they grew older. Rebecca grew closer to Dad for some bizarre reason. And Ben was usually pretty loyal to anything that Connor did because Connor, who was about ten years older than Ben, had basically raised our younger brother. There was never a clear political schism in our family, especially since Ellen, Jill, and Tasha were still British citizens, but by 2004, it was highly likely that more of Senator James Jefferson Walsh's children would be voting Republican than Democrat. Getting those perfect happy family photos was getting harder and harder. We were all as photogenic as ever. But we weren't quite as close or happy with each other as we'd once been.

* * *

My family life was almost the opposite of Meghan's. In 2004, my parents celebrated their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary. I was their oldest child, born nine months after their wedding. I had four younger sisters, all of whom were married by 2004. But my parents wanted me to marry and provide them with a grandson to carry on the Fenton family name. I think my mom just wanted me married so she didn't have to worry about me being alone in my apartment in Hartford. I was a grown man but my mother was still worried about me. Of course, she was Italian; her parents were born in the old country and my nonna had taught my mother how to worry. She had four daughters who were married with children she could have worried about but instead she worried about her unmarried son.

I grew up in a suburb of Hartford, Connecticut where my dad wrote for the _Hartford Courant_. I had four sisters, as I mentioned earlier. Michelle is two years younger than me. Juliana came along three years later and was followed two years later by the twins, Elizabeth and Karen. Now, Michelle was thirty-two, married with three children, and living in Chicago. Julie is twenty-nine, married, and living in Hartford with two children. Liz and Karen are twenty-seven. Liz lives in San Francisco with her husband and their baby while Karen is in London with her husband and two daughters. And I was in Hartford, single, and writing political columns for whoever would read them. That was until my niece Katharine was born. I went to Chicago with my mom to help Michelle out with her older kids, Audrey and James. That was when I met Meghan Walsh. She was twenty-four years old and she came from a dysfunctional family. While my family gatherings went until two in the morning, hers were over by ten o'clock. And The Fenton family managed to get together at least five or six times a year in addition to Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving, except for Karen who only came for Christmas, but the only times the Walsh family was together was Thanksgiving and Christmas as well as every six years on Election Day, the Illinois Democratic Convention, and whenever their dad needed to prove how much of a family man he was.

The Walsh family was dysfunctional and very different from my family. While family dinners at the Walsh family house were reminiscent of the Civil War, my family's dinners were more like a mall the day after Thanksgiving. They were loud, chaotic, and more fun than you could imagine. My mother's Italian family was always eating, talking, and trying to fix everyone's problems-and all at the same time. Meghan was slightly scared the first time I took her to meet them. All the women talk constantly. My sisters have mastered the art of carrying on five conversations at once. And there were only four of them. Don't ask me how they do it. I can only carry on two conversations on it at a time. Meghan told me once that she can only carry on one at a time; multiple conversations are not a gift the Irish have, according to her. I'd argue with that; I always though they were supposed to have the gift of gab. Meghan told me that she wasn't expressing that part of her Irish heritage.

* * *

"I'm not much of a talker," I told Gregory on our first date. "I talk a lot at work. But other than that, I prefer quiet. I think it's from growing up with my father giving speeches all the time. I'm used to letting other people do all the talking. My dad loves to talk and Rebecca, my younger sister, never shuts up. So I learned to keep quiet and just listen."

"I grew up with four sisters who never stopped talking so I just learned to talk over them," he told me. "I was louder than they were and that helped me survive."

I smiled. "The Walsh house isn't like that. If you're too loud, the others tell you to be quiet. It's all about being respectful."

"So Senator Walsh likes to be in charge of things?"

"Greg, don't use me for information about my dad. I like you; you're a great guy and I enjoy spending time with you. But I'm not going to spill information to you about my dad just because you're one of his enemies. I'm not a vengeful teenaged girl; I'm simply a jaded daughter who has accepted the truth about her father."

He looked at me with a firm, unwavering gaze. "I'm not digging for information about your dad. I don't like him. But I'm not going to use you for information about him. I'm almost positive I could learn his deepest and most horrible secrets from your older brother without any trouble."

That was probably true. Connor lost no love on Senator James Jefferson Walsh; he maintained that our father had died with our mother and was buried under her tombstone. His body kept living as that monster, Senator Walsh. But I wasn't just about to admit those sorts of things about Connor. My brother wasn't public about his feelings towards our father. He was always civil and playing the good loving son when the public eye was around. He didn't want the media or my dad's constituency to know the truth about their relationship. "Connor thinks that it isn't anyone's business what our family life is like behind closed doors."

"But your dad has chosen to live a public life."

"That's true," I replied. "But Connor hasn't made that choice. He's a lawyer in private practice with a wife and a child. He and Jessica have not chosen to live a public life. They, like me, have chosen to live a private life."

"What would you do if you married someone who lives their life in the public eye?"

"Scream," I replied with a smile.

"What if it was someone who wasn't going to drag you into things?"

I blinked. "How would that work?"

"Well, for example, I travel around the country speaking to various groups like local branches of the Republican Party or pro-life groups. But I'm not hugely famous and I don't think I'd ever have to drag my wife and children into all of that. I'm not sure I'd want to."

"I wouldn't want that. My ideal would be a nice quiet life with my work, my husband, and my kids."

He smiled. "Is your husband allowed to work?"

"Of course," I laughed. "I'm secretly a very traditional woman. But don't tell my dad. Or my stepmother, she doesn't believe that women should ever be stay-at-home parents. She thinks that children should always be raised in day cares or by nannies. She has some pretty interesting ideas about childrearing and family life in general. She also believes that marriage is merely a social institution that we have evolved beyond and that the sooner we accept that fact, the better off this world will be. She is opposed to gay marriage for the same reasons. She doesn't think gay people should marry because she doesn't think that anyone should get married."

"Isn't she married?"

I sighed. "My father explained to her that there was no way someone of his political caliber could live with a woman without marrying her. He also told her that he publicly claims to be Catholic so she had to concede to that too. But she's actually pretty much anti-organized religion. She has very open-minded views on the world and society."

He smiled. "So she doesn't believe in marriage or organized religion. What does she believe in?"

"Don't ask me," I told him. "She likes people; she loves shopping and socializing. She's an amazing hostess and she loves causes; she's great at fund-raising and other philanthropic activities. She hosts wonderful fundraisers for my dad during campaigns. And she is a nice person."

"They say Hitler was a nice person," he replied.

"Who is they?" I asked. "I've never heard that one before."

* * *

A/N: Please review! I really want to hear people's opinions.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: I don't own _Persuasion_ or the poetry of William Shakespeare that appears at the end of the chapter. Thanks so much for all the reviews. To those who have asked, politics are going to be used as a vehicle to tell the story as Hollywood was in my last _Persuasion_ story. If I offend members of a certain party or people who hold certain ideologies, I'm sorry. I am using a highly contentious issue to demonstrate how differences in family can create a situation similar to the one found in Jane Austen's novel.

* * *

Chapter Two

From the get-go I knew that my dad wouldn't like Gregory. And while Greg was used to the idea of my dad, my dad was not used to the idea of Greg. My dad was still angry at Connor for his "conversion" to conservatism. The idea that I could be dating one of the most conservative writers around was "breaking his heart," according to my stepmother. I doubted that but I was sure that was he was angry with me. There was no way that he would stand for the idea of his daughter marrying someone as conservative as Greg. In his world, people married within their social class and within their political sphere. People did not marry from the other side of the aisle; he had been very insistent about that all through Connor and Jessica's engagement. When they married, he'd been extremely civil and proper when relating to Jessica's family, as Ellen had requested. She had told him that even though she didn't support the idea of marriage in general, if Connor was going to insist on going through with that ridiculously outdated social and religious ritual, she was going to buy a nice dress and a plane ticket to New York City to support him in what he was doing. Furthermore, she would be paying for the rehearsal dinner and the alcohol at the reception. And if my dad refused to attend the wedding simply because of Jessica's political views and affiliations, the money for all those expenses was coming from his private bank account. So Senator James J. Walsh attended his son's wedding and even managed a grim smile for one or two of the wedding photos.

The first time I unsuccessfully attempted to take him to meet my dad and stepmother, Greg and I had been dating long-distance for about a year. I was still living and working in Chicago while he was still based out of Connecticut. He'd met Connor and Jessica. I'd met his family. I'd taken him to Notre Dame where he'd met Benjamin. I'd even introduced him to my mom's extended family. But he hadn't met Rebecca, Jillian, Natasha, Ellen, or the venerable Senator. I didn't see much of them in general but I knew they wouldn't like Greg. My dad had heard that we were together and had written me an irate email which had been followed by an emotional phone call. He was angry; I was defensive. That was the way our relationship went. He wanted me to break up with Greg then and there. I wanted to stay with him. "I love him, Dad," I yelled. I was stalking around my apartment wearing black sweatpants and red camisole. I was exhausted after a long day at work and I just wanted to curl up in a ball with a glass of white zinfandel and a book. Instead, I was on the phone with my dad arguing with him about whether or not I could choose my own boyfriends at the age of twenty-five.

"Love is not the issue here, Meghan," he replied. "Gregory just is not the kind of man you should be marrying. He's a Republican. He's constantly attacking my policies and politics. He doesn't like me. And I can't let you be in any sort of serious relationship with a Republican."

"John Kerry married a Republican!"

"Yeah, and then she became a Democrat. So what's to say that you wouldn't become a Republican if you married this asshole?"

I sighed. "He's a good person. He isn't going to force anything on me."

"You don't know that, Meghan. I'm smarter than you are. I've lived longer than you are and I know that politics are a dangerous business. No one just wants to be your friend. They all have motives. They want your money or your power."

"Dad, I teach first grade. I don't have any political power. Furthermore, I work at a Catholic school; I have no money. Greg is a lawyer; he makes way more money in a year than I ever will."

"You aren't honestly planning on being a teacher forever. You could do so much more with your life. You have a degree in English and psychology from Notre Dame and then you got your master's in education."

"But this is what I want to do. I've wanted to be a teacher since I was a little girl."

"Well, that's all well and good but there's more to life than your childhood dreams. You're a smart girl, Meghan. I'd wager that you're the smartest of my children."

Is patricide a crime if it is merely in self-defense of your sanity? My dad has become my biggest headache and source of stress. He abhors the idea that I'm dating Gregory Fenton. He doesn't like my career choice. He probably doesn't like the clothes I wear or the apartment in which I live. If he could, he would completely rearrange my life so that I was behaving like the perfect politician's daughter. I would teach underprivileged children in inner-city Chicago for a while and maybe do a stint as an intern with some noble charitable organization like the ONE campaign. And it would all be good, not just for him but for me. But it wasn't what I wanted to be doing. Noble deeds were best when they came from the heart. And my heart was focused on teaching and helping people through education.

"Meghan, are you listening to me?"

"Nope," I replied, flopping on my couch. "Dad, you're not going to change my mind. All that I'm saying is that if you and Ellen are going to have me over for dinner while you're in town next weekend, I'd like to bring Greg with me. And here's the deal. If he can't come, then I'm not coming."

"Oh well," he replied. "I guess we won't see you next weekend."

"I'll see you some other time. Tell Ellen and the girls I say hello."

* * *

"So your dad doesn't want to meet me," I told Meghan. "Are you really that surprised? He and I probably don't exactly see eye-to-eye on much."

"He's so close-minded," she sighed. "He claims to be so liberal and free-thinking. But he can't stand anyone who disagrees with him."

"I'm sorry," I told her. I was in my loft in Hartford, working on a column about the Democratic Party's desire to control the White House and Congress by the year's end. It was reminding me of what Meghan was saying about her relationship with her father.

"He wants absolute power over everything. It's not just about politics. He wants to control his family. And we're adults. Yeah we're his children but we're adults. I'm twenty-five years old. I can make my own decisions. He doesn't have to approve my boyfriends anymore. I'm a big girl. I can find my own boyfriends. It's not like I want to go to my junior prom with Joey McAllister or something stupid like that. I just want to date a good Catholic guy who happens to have different political views than my father."

I smiled. "I miss you, gorgeous. I can't wait to be with you."

"You'll be here in three days."

"Yeah and I have to finish my column before then."

"Just don't say anything bad about my dad," she said.

I laughed. "I'll try, Meg. I don't want to mess up your relationship with your dad."

"Is it humanly possible to screw things up more than they already are?"

"You two could become completely estranged," I offered.

"That might be preferable."

"Meghan, honey, deep down inside you love your father."

"It must be really deep down," she joked.

* * *

For Christmas 2005, I went to New York to spend the holiday with my brothers and my sister-in-law. My dad was hosting a family fiasco for all the winter holidays ranging from Winter Solstice to Kwanzaa to Boxing Day. Connor, on the other hand, was hosting a traditional Christmas family dinner on December 25, in honor of the Nativity of Jesus Christ. My younger brother, Benjamin, was spending his Christmas break from Notre Dame with Connor and his family. Connor had married Jessica Walters in the fall of 2002. Jessica was the daughter of the District Attorney of some town near New York City. They'd met when Connor was in law school at Columbia. Jessica was finishing up her senior year at Columbia while Connor was in his first year of law school. Jess was a nurse. She was born in Korea; her parents had adopted her when she was six months old.

Jess and Connor had been married for about three years that Christmas. They had two children; Hannah was two and Aidan was four months old. My niece and nephew were absolutely adorable. "They're the best part of not going home for Christmas," Benjamin told me the day we flew to New York.

I laughed. "Come on, Ben. You love Dad and Ellen."

"Oh yeah, being asked when I'm going to decide which law school I want to go to is my dream."

"Okay, so that part isn't fun. But surely there's something you like."

"I used to like Tasha and Jill but now they're just obnoxious fashionistas who want nothing but to marry Prince William. And I could swear he had a girlfriend."

"I think he does," I replied. "But they think that just because they're from England, he'll want to marry them."

"Hey, at least it would get them out of our hair."

I smiled. "Well, at least you're not a girl who has them checking out every guy you ever bring home."

"Is that why you've never taken Greg to meet the Senator and his wife?"

I rumpled my brother's dark brown hair. "No, that would be a direct result of the fact that James Jefferson Walsh doesn't want to meet my boyfriend."

"What's he going to do when Greg becomes your fiancé?"

"Shoot me," I replied.

He looked at me. "It can't be that serious."

"Ben, I want to join the Republican Party. That's not exactly acceptable behavior in Dad's world. He pretty much blacklisted Connor when he did that. And what I'd be doing is worse. I'd be sleeping with the enemy, right after I married the enemy. That's like bringing Satan into the house and asking him to live with you forever in Dad's world."

"So if Greg asks you to marry him, what are you going to say?"

"I hope you never want to meet my dad because he never wants to meet you. But if you're fine with that, then sure, let's get married."

He smiled. "Meg, you love him. You want to marry him."

"Duh," I replied.

* * *

Meghan spent Christmas 2005 in New York City with her brother and his family while I spent that holiday with my family in Hartford. Two days after Christmas, I drove down to the city to spend some time with my girlfriend and her family. Then we were going to spend New Year's with my family. She'd met most of my family before but this would be the first time she met Karen and her family. "Karen's awesome," I told her the first night I was in New York. "She and Stefan are warm, outgoing people. They love talking and people and Karen is addicted to coffee."

"Coffee is disgusting," she told me leaning back against me.

"I know you think that," I said, running my hands through her hair. "But some people like it."

"I thought Brits were all about their tea."

"Karen and Stefan aren't British; they just live in England. And besides, not all Brits are like your stepmother and her children."

"I knew that. Most Brits aren't crazy."

"Most people aren't crazy," I told her.

"Says you," she said, sticking out her lower lip. "You've never lived with my family."

"Ben and Connor seem pretty normal to me."

"They take after my mom. My dad, Becca, Ellen, Jill, and Tasha aren't quite so normal. My stepsisters are snobs and my sister is so self-centered. Rebecca lives in my dad's world. She always has to be the center of attention. I'm pretty sure she became a hypochondriac just for attention."

"She's a hypochondriac?"

"And she wants to be just like my dad. It's all kind of confusing and disturbing."

I smiled. "How long would a hypochondriac last in Congress?"

She shrugged. "The fact that she's pretty much a simpering moron is a bigger issue than her hypochondria."

"I thought she went to Yale."

"Well, she is going to law school there. But she's mostly getting by on our dad's money and prestige. She's not exactly the smartest member of the family. After all, she couldn't get into Notre Dame."

"But the rest of us could," Ben said as he walked into the room. "And she took five years to graduate where the rest of us took four."

"Maybe she was just doing a harder degree than the rest of you?" I suggested.

"She majored in political science at the University of Illinois."

"And now she's at Yale?"

"Yep," Meghan replied. "She wants to be a lawyer like Dad."

"But he started out as a pro-bono lawyer or something like that about forty years ago," Ben inserted.

"Your dad used to be a pro-bono lawyer?"

"No," Meghan said. "He was one of those court-appointed attorneys. He got paid but not much. And then he got involved in local politics."

"And married Mom," her younger brother added. "They met when he insulted her, thinking that she worked at Marshall Fields while she was shopping one Saturday. But somehow they ended up together, married for about fifteen years."

"When we were little," my girlfriend explained. "Our dad was an amazing dad. He played with us. He took us all kinds of places with us. He gave speeches with us in his arms."

"And then what happened?" I asked.

"Mom died and he became really depressed and really immersed in work." Meghan's eyes were really sad. "He just shoved us off on nannies and each other."

"Meg and Connor ended up raising Becca and me. But then Becca worships him for some reason."

"She's probably the most like him."

"That's true."

I looked at the two siblings. "Do you ever worry about your family?"

"All the time," Ben said. "See here's the thing; the public sees my dad one way, the way he wants them to see him. They see him as strong, powerful, dominant, and on top of the world. But people who have known him for a long time, people who knew him when my mom was alive, they see a different James Walsh. They see a frail, frightened man."

"When Mom was alive, she kept Dad on the straight and narrow. She was the strong Catholic force in the family. She was his angel, his northern star. I think she might have almost been his god or personal Messiah. She kept him positive and focused. When she was alive, he went by Jim Walsh; he was relaxed and someone you could feel comfortable about. His constituents saw him as someone you could go to the local bar and have a beer with him. He wore jeans and rolled up his sleeves. But then Mom died and he retreated into himself. He started dressing and acting more formally. He wasn't the beer at the pub kind of guy anymore. Suddenly, he was the wine snob and stand-offish elitist."

"And the worst thing was that Dad's political positions changed when Mom died. Before she died, he was one of those Catholic Democrats who are personally opposed to abortion but don't want to impose their views on other people. After she died, he suddenly changed his views on everything. He became personally in favor of abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and assisted suicide. He disconnected himself from his children and started using us only for photo ops. I was shoved off at a nanny. Meghan and Connor were just ignored. Rebecca, well, I don't really know what happened with her. She kept to herself and shadowed Dad whenever he was home."

"She was a weird kid after Mom died," Meghan said. "She lived in her own world."

"I think she'd lived there before Mom died," Ben told his sister. "But it just became more evident when she was left to her own devices."

Meg shrugged and leaned her head against me. "I don't know. I worry about her and I don't know what to do about her."

As a journalist, this relationship occasionally raised ethical dilemmas for me. I had inside information about the life of one of the most notorious liberal politicians in my country. I didn't like James Walsh as a politician and he wasn't interested in me as a person. Despite the fact that I'd been dating his daughter for close to a year and a half, he had no interest in meeting me. And I think his opinions were starting to grate on Meghan. It was hard for her to stay strong after months of pushing from her dad, stepmother, and younger sister. And I knew better than trying to force her into anything or make her mind up. I was worried that her father might destroy our relationship. But I knew that he was a powerful man and he could threaten his daughter's way of life if he wanted. I wasn't quite sure what he could or would do to her. But I was afraid that he would use his political power to mess with her life. I was starting to understand the dangers of dating the daughter of a powerful Democratic Senator while being a Republican.

* * *

The day before New Year's Eve, Greg and I went to his parents' house for the rest of my Christmas break. Robert and Mary, Greg's parents, were warm, friendly, and comfortable. I loved being around them. Their house was so warm and homey, not like my dad's sterile and perfect McMansion in Chicago or his neat and precise townhouse on the Beltway. The house looked like people lived there. There were movies on top of the TV, like someone had been using it someplace and the grandchildren's toys were scattered around their playroom. It was a comfortable home and I loved it. I'd been there before but each time I visited I grew more enchanted by the house and the family. I loved Greg's family. They were just such great people. They were warm, loving, and friendly.

Unfortunately for me, my own family was pressuring me to end my relationship with Greg. My stepsisters had both emailed me with various reasons my dad and stepmom had for why I needed to break up with him. Rebecca had called me to inform me that it was my "family duty" to date a Democrat and I needed to get away from "that firebrand." I didn't want to break up with Greg but I was sick of being pressured and pushed. I didn't like being told what to do but I didn't want to keep being a source of division in my family. "It's so stressful," I told Greg. "They hate you but they don't know you. And they're pushing me and they're attacking me. It's starting to wear at me. I don't want to break up with you. I love you. I want to stay with you, be with you. But I can't handle this."

"Do you want to be with me?" he asked me.

"Of course," I replied without hesitation.

"Then tell them to go to hell."

I was so jealous of his family. He probably could have told Robert and Mary to go to hell if they were doing something like this to him. I was determined to stay strong and ignore my family if it meant that I could be with this man.

* * *

And then came the phone call from my stepmother. "Meghan Christine, what the fuck do you think you're doing? Is this your way of rebelling? Are you trying to punish your father for some perceived slight?"

"No," I replied quickly. "I'm simply trying to follow my heart and be with the one I love. I would think you would understand that. You left your first husband when you stopped loving him. You're with Dad because you love him."

"He's a Republican."

"And a wonderful human being," I replied. "And I love him. He and I agree about so many things. It's wonderful to find someone with whom I have so much in common. I'm not ending this relationship to make Dad happy."

"You could destroy his political career."

"I don't care."

My stepmother's voice grew cold and harsh. "Meghan, he's just using you. He just wants to get close to your father and destroy him. This boy doesn't care a bit about you. He just wants to tear down your father, one of the strongest Democrats out there. He's using you. He doesn't actually like you or love you. He is just pretending to be this good conservative, Catholic boy to lure you in."

"You're lying!"

"Think about it, Meghan. He's just preying on a poor, pitiful, pathetic young woman. He doesn't love you. Why would he love you? You're so different from each other. He's just playing with you. It's a game to him. You're just a game, just a toy to him."

My stepmother was playing on my insecurities, my fear of abandonment. Because of my mother's death and my father's reaction to it, I had developed an irrational belief that I was unlovable. And while Greg had worked to downplay that and fight that, the fears were still there. And that was why I fled in fear. I didn't know what to do. I was afraid that he didn't love me. Why wouldn't he be using me? He asked me so many questions about my dad. Maybe he really was just using me to get to Dad. Maybe Shakespeare was right and men were "deceivers ever."

_Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, _

_Men were deceivers ever; _

_One foot in sea, and one on shore, _

_To one thing constant never. _

…

_Sing no more ditties, sing no mo _

_Of dumps so dull and heavy; _

_The fraud of men was ever so, _

_Since summer first was leavy. _

-William Shakespeare

* * *

A/N: Please review! I hope you like it.


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: I don't own _Persuasion_ or the Tennyson poem quoted at the beginning of the chapter.

**Chapter Three**

_We are not now that strength which in old days_

_Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;_

_One equal temper of heroic hearts,_

_Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will_

_To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield._

-_Ulysses (lines 66-70) Alfred, Lord Tennyson_

* * *

And then Meghan sighed as she looked at me. "It's just not reasonable or rational," she told me severely. "We're too different people living different lives. Just forget it; we could never make it work."

Her dark eyes grew darker as tears brimmed to the surface and she turned her head away. My gaze remained fixed, steady, and emotionless. But before I could say anything, Meghan had walked away from me. My deepest fears had come true. Meghan had left me because of her family's pressure. I loved her and I knew that she loved me. But the pressure had just gotten to be too much.

It was hard not to be angry with Meghan. I loved her and I wanted to marry her. But I knew what her dad was like. He hated the fact that his oldest son, Connor, was a registered member of the Republican Party. Connor was forever banished to the back of family portraits for that rebellion. But if his oldest daughter defected by not only joining the Republican Party but then married me-conservative logger, columnist, commentator, and overall watchdog extraordinaire-he would flip out. In his mind, that would destroy his dreams of becoming president. If I knew Senator Walsh, he had probably threatened his daughter with physical harm. I knew his wife had played on her stepdaughter's insecurities. Meghan didn't know that I knew how violent her father could be when he wanted. But I had seen the bruises she tried to hide. They weren't always physical, although they were at times, but I saw the wounds, the scars on Meghan's heart.

* * *

If life really was like the movies, things would have been much simpler for us. In romantic comedies, things always work out for the gorgeous girl and her slightly dorky but still wonderfully amazing boyfriend. At the end of the movie, her family and friends who were opposed to their relationship would suffer humiliations galore. In our case, that would just mean people would finally see Senator Walsh as a corrupt hypocritical asshole. And then Meg and I could get married and settle down and raise a family together in peace. I would keep writing my column, she could teach as long as she wanted to, and we would have a peaceful life without any unnecessary interference from her dad or the rest of her family. Okay, Connor and Jessica could stick around; they were on our side. But they'd been where we were before. Connor was the black sheep of the family and rarely allowed around. But whenever the cameras were near them, James Walsh tried to act as buddy-buddy as possible with his oldest son. But backstage, in private life, he was as insulting as humanly possible.

It would be the same way for Meghan if she married me. Most of the year, James would treat her like dirt, pond scum. But then when he needed his kids for his campaigns he would try to buy their love, or at least their time. I'm not sure James knew what love actually was. Oh sure he'd been married twice and produced four children. But with enough money and persuasion, you can get a lot of things these days. The Senator is a prime example of that. He makes me so angry and I've never even met him.

I love Meghan but I can't stand her dad, politically or personally. But she loves him for being her father. And that's why things won't work out for us, can't work out for us. He's a skunk; she deserves better but will never let herself get it. She struggles with her self-esteem and self-image. The only reason her family managed to get through to her was because they told her that I didn't love her and I was just using her. I could see why she would believe that. I had asked her so many personal questions about her father. I had asked about his policies and his family life. All of my questions had to seem suspicious in light of what her stepmother had said. I could only imagine what I would think if someone kept asking me in depth personal questions about my family. I would probably assume that they were trying to gather information to use against me.

* * *

Life in Chicago, life without Gregory was painful and miserable. It was like living under a permanent thundercloud that never unleashed its fury. I was welcome back into my father's good graces and was suddenly welcome at their house whenever they wanted. I had regular coffee dates with my stepsisters. Jill and Tasha are great girls; they're a little snobby and not always understanding. But you can watch chick flicks with them and eat chocolate and talk about boys. They like hearing cute stories about the little kids with whom I worked. "I don't understand how little kids can say so many silly, ridiculous things without even realizing it," Jill remarked one day when we were talking.

I shrugged. I had just finished telling her a story about a student who had asked me to marry him that morning. "It makes sense in their minds."

"But telling you that he plans on being a rich doctor and you'll never have to worry about where you're going to buy your gold stars again," she said.

"Little kids tend to think that gold stars are really expensive and I have to spend a lot of money on them. They don't realize that I get them for only a dollar or two."

My stepsister smiled. "Sometimes listening to you makes me want to be a teacher."

Jillian was eighteen and a freshman at the University of Chicago. She wasn't sure what she wanted to do with her life. "I've heard too much of politics from living with James, your dad. I could never do anything that has to do with constituency or policies or committee meetings. I'm sick of listening to discussions of whether or not your dad should try to work with various moderate Republicans to achieve their mutual goals because no one in politics ever does anything just to do it. Everyone has motives and things they want in return for services rendered. I can't live a life like that. If I'm going to help people, I'd rather just do it for the sake of helping them."

"You could go into nursing or teaching," I suggested. "Those are service fields."

"I think I'd like to do something like the Peace Corps or something. I think I might want to do nursing or major in a foreign language like Spanish or French or something. And then I want to go someplace like Africa or South America and do something that will actually help people. I want to affect the world. I want to do something that matters. You found that in teaching. Connor gets that from being a lawyer. I think my mom gets that from writing but I'm not sure. You have to remember I was raised by proper British nannies; I don't really know my mom."

I smiled. "She's a good person. She has some interesting and slightly unusual ideas. But she's a good person and she carries about you and Natasha."

"That's what Tasha always says."

"Maybe she's right," I suggested. "She is older than you. She remembers things from before the divorce."

"I remember things from before the divorce!" Jillian protested. "I was seven when they separated. I remember things from before then."

I smiled. "I'm sure you do. I just think that Tasha probably remembers more than you do."

"Two years more," she said bitterly. "But I just don't understand why they got divorced."

"Maybe they had personality differences that they felt they couldn't resolve. Or maybe things between them had changed over the years."

"But that's what marriage counseling is for!"

I sighed. "Jill, sometimes people make dumb decisions when they're young and when they get older they regret those decisions."

My stepsister looked at me. "I thought you were supposed to be this strong, ardent conservative who promoted the family. I never thought you would ever say that divorce was an appropriate course of action. You're supposed to be the good Catholic of the family."

"No, that's Connor. I'm not perfect. I try to promote family values and all that. But I'm not completely convinced that marriage is for everyone or even for me. And some people make mistakes and marry the wrong person."

"Is that what was happening with you and Gregory? Was he the wrong person for you?"

I shrugged. "I liked him. But I don't think he was in it for the right reasons. Your mom seemed to think that he was just in it to get at Dad. And that's not right. Dad is my dad, no matter how screwed up my relationship with him is."

Jillian tossed her blonde hair. "I always thought you were the really conservative type who would only marry once. I always thought you were only a Democrat to make your dad happy."

"What does divorce have to do with being a Republican or a Democrat? John McCain has been divorced but so has John Kerry. Prince Charles has been divorced. The Crown Prince of Spain is married to a woman who has been divorced before. Divorce happens all over the place. It's not just limited to Democrats or Republicans."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," came as my stepsister's reply. She was curled up on a couch in my apartment, drinking a cup of coffee she'd picked up at Starbucks on her way over to my place. "I hate partisan politics."

"Then stop using it to classify people or my life or my beliefs," I replied. "My dad is a Democrat. Greg is a Republican. I don't know which one I am. I don't think I can morally be a Democrat but I'm not sure I understand the Republican Party well enough to join it. I'm not even sure that is really where I fit. I agree with their policies about abortion and stuff like that. But I'm not sure I agree with them socially or about things like war. I don't like the idea of war in general; I think it's stupid. But I'm not sure that I'm a pacifist."

"Oh, I know I'm always opposed to war," the eighteen-year-old replied. "But you have to admit that soldiers are hot, especially Marines in their uniforms."

I sighed. "But that doesn't change the fact that I don't think that war is the answer. Violence doesn't solve problems. And I don't like the idea of the United States as this empire or a global policeman. I don't like the idea that we go into countries and overthrow their governments. But at the same time, as human beings we do have a moral responsibility to help our brothers and sisters in need. It's like the situation in Darfur or any other genocide-type situation. What do we do? What is the role of a nation like the U.S. or England in a situation like that?"

"I miss being a little kid. I hate the feeling that we have to make decisions and they help change the world."

"I thought you wanted to change the world," I challenged her.

"But I don't want to be responsible for a war or the death of innocent people. I want to change things for the better."

"So finish college and join the Peace Corps or something like that. Go to Africa and give kids clean drinking water. Give some kid in South America a pair of glasses and a chance to see the world."

"You think I should become a nurse?"

I nodded. "I'm not telling you what to do. I'm the worst person ever for things like that. But I think you'd be a great nurse. You're compassionate. You're caring. You're not afraid of blood. And you could change the world. I think you really could do something amazing."

"I want to be like you," Jill told me. Statements like that scared me. I didn't think I was doing anything earth-shattering. I was a teacher. I was just a pathetic first grade teacher trying to make the world a better place. And most days I wasn't sure that I was succeeding.

* * *

Days passed. Weeks passed. I grew a beard but that was mostly because I knew that Meghan hated the idea of beards on men, especially me. I still missed Meghan. I missed her voice and her sense of humor. I missed her emails and her stories about her students' antics. And it hurt when I talked to Audrey and she told me that she occasionally saw Miss Walsh at school. "She looks so sad, Uncle Greg. She looks like her world has been torn to pieces. I bet she feels the way I did the day I found out that there was no Santa Claus."

But I wasn't using her to create some kind of exposé about her dad. I wasn't using her for anything at all. I loved her. I wanted to scream that from the rooftops. I didn't want her to think that I was trying to use her. I wanted her to know the truth. And there was only one way I could get through to my girl. I was going to write a column about honesty and integrity. I didn't know if she would understand or appreciate what I had to say, but it was worth a shot.

_Writing as Ulysses of Homer's famed epic, Tennyson said that "we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are." Calling things the way they are is vital. No relationship can survive without honesty. If you want someone to listen to you, you have to tell them the truth. Oh sure relationships can work if you simply tell people what they want to hear. But if you are discovered as a liar, the relationship will have been irrevocably damaged. When you change, you must let the other party know that you are changing. _

_Part of honesty is always keeping the other party apprised of where you stand. You should also be willing to listen to the other party and hear what they have to say. If they are accused of something, you must give them a chance to defend themselves. This is true in all areas of life. But I find it to be particularly important in politics and romantic relationships. These are two difficult areas of life and they become even more complex when they are mixed. I recently realized this when a long-term relationship in which I had been involved and invested ended suddenly. The lady, who was the soul of honor, was the daughter of an important elected official who happens to hold political beliefs very different from my own. His daughter and I were closer on certain political issues than on others. But we were close on many issues and we found ourselves growing very close. And then, at some point in our relationship, I found my hopes and expectations being challenged for political reasons. Outside forces were working against us and things rapidly tumbled down. These people told this young lady that I was not what I claimed to be. I was accused of using her to get to her father, a man who had time and again refused to meet me simply because of this blog and my political views and affiliations. _

_I have been called names time and again over the course of my career. I have been referred to as "a major contributor to the fervor of the right wing" and "one of the biggest reasons that damn vast right wing conspiracy is still active." But I have never been accused of lying or manipulating a woman before. Being accused of using a woman to get at someone whose politics I dislike stung. And when I realized that my actions were in line with these accusations, I felt like hell. I felt like an asshole. And I realized that I hadn't been completely honest with this young woman. I should have been honest with her about myself from the beginning. I should have made it clearer that she could trust me to always do the honorable thing._

_The people of the United States of America need to know that they can trust their leaders. Relationships between politicians and their constituencies are similar to marriages. Trust is crucial to any relationship. If anything is going to work, the trust has to be there. You have to give people enough reason to trust you. No matter how long the relationship lasts if the trust isn't there, things will eventually fall apart. If two partners can't trust each other, then what is their relationship worth? If a child cannot trust their parent, they cannot have a true, strong relationship. If a nation cannot trust the leaders it elects, it cannot function as it should. I have realized this now more than ever. I failed this young woman. I have always tried to be strong and honorable. I am a firm believer in chivalric ideals and I feel that these are essential in all of my relationships. I would like to get more into the political arena someday and I don't think I can do this at this point in my life. I cannot trust myself with that kind of power when I fail at relationships._ _I wasn't the man I'd believed myself to be. I hadn't shown myself to be honorable. If a woman could find it believable that I was using her and manipulating her, then I wasn't being the man she needed me to be. I wasn't being the strong, chivalrous gentleman I wanted to be. I was being some who wasn't trustworthy. And I never want to be that person for anyone-my family, my friends, my girlfriend, or the people for whom I am responsible._

_At the end of his poem, Tennyson has Ulysses say that he and his men are "one equal temper of heroic hearts;/ Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will/ to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." This is what I need to be. I need to be a friend, brother, son, uncle, writer, lawyer, and whatever else I may be who is strong in will. I need to refuse to strive, seek, find, and refuse to yield. _

* * *

I saw Greg's column about my favorite poem. He thought he was to blame for the way things ended. But while he might have had something to do with it, the real blame could be placed with my family and my own insecurities. I could have stayed with Greg and left my family behind if I weren't such an idiot, so afraid of everything including love and a future without fear. That was what really stood between Greg and me. I was afraid to leave the confines of the life I had created for myself after my mom died. I was afraid to leap. I didn't have much faith in "happily ever after." I saw my parents' marriage as strong and loving. And then I watched my dad fall apart emotionally and become the pawn of lobbyists and big money corporations. I'd heard it said once that you could buy Senator James Walsh's vote and swing it whichever way you chose; all you needed was enough money. My dad laughed when he heard things like that; "I'm just the voice of the people," he would say.

But he needed to have his own voice, his own opinions and beliefs. He couldn't just be some people-pleaser, a political prostitute, as it were. His opinions and speeches were formulated for him by other people. The people of Illinois could see James Walsh's voting record and the platforms on which he campaigned. But they couldn't know what Jim Walsh, husband, father, grandfather, friend, and neighbor thought about things. No one, not even Ellen, knew how he really felt about things. "Maybe he doesn't feel at all anymore," Connor had suggested once.

"That's a sickening idea," I'd replied. But maybe I was afraid to feel anymore. Maybe I was afraid to love and let myself get in too deep. And then I could get hurt. I was afraid of wounds that are deeper than paper cuts, wounds band-aids can't cover and Neosporin can't fix. I was afraid of opening up to someone about the pain in my past and my insecurities about my personality and my appearance. I didn't think I was the prettiest girl around or the smartest. I had dated Greg for close to a year and a half, and while he knew that I was a little insecure, he never realized how deep things ran. I never let him in far enough. I never trusted him enough. He knew that but he never knew why. I never told him how desolated and destroyed I was when my mom died.

And I was afraid of him. I never wanted to see him again. I loved him too much and I knew that he could never love me again. He could never trust me again.

* * *

A/N: Please review!


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: I don't own _Persuasion_ or the Yeats poem used to open the chapter. And I'm actually not a Republican or a Democrat.

**Chapter Four**

_Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, _

_Enwrought with golden and silver light, _

_The blue and the dim and the dark cloths _

_Of night and light and the half-light, _

_I would spread the cloths under your feet: _

_But I, being poor, have only my dreams; _

_I have spread my dreams under your feet; _

_Tread softly because you tread on my dreams._

-William Butler Yeats

* * *

About a year after Greg and I broke up, my stepmother moved to Washington to be closer to her husband. With Jillian and Tasha off at school most of the year and the rest of us out of college, they didn't want to keep their big house anymore. "But we need it for fundraisers," my dad told me over dinner one night. "Your mother and I bought the house because it was perfect for hosting events. And it had enough bedrooms to raise four children. But now, Ellen and I don't need a place like that. I'm almost never there. The only thing we might use it for is fundraising."

"And someday your grandchildren will come over," I told him.

"Connor's children are so young," he replied. "They probably wouldn't feel comfortable in the Walsh Mansion."

"You could sell the Walsh Mansion," I suggested.

"Meghan, I could never sell that house. Your mother loved that house."

"Dad, Mom's been dead for over fifteen years."

"But she was my first wife and I can't let that house go."

I sighed. "You could rent it to someone."

"No," he replied without hesitation. "No one gets that house except my family. If you wanted to live there, I would let you stay there rent-free. But I'm not letting anyone outside of this family stay there. It's not like I need the money or anything. Ellen and I make plenty of money and you kids all have jobs and the money your mother left you."

And that is, more or less, how I ended up giving up my apartment and moving into my parents' house. I had the mansion to myself most of the time. My siblings and stepsiblings would appear occasionally. Rebecca was working for our dad in Washington D.C. but she would periodically appear in Chicago and stay with me. I loved the company; most of the time it was just me with two dogs and a cat in the house.

* * *

One morning in June I walked into the kitchen and found Rebecca sitting there in her bathrobe drinking coffee. She had flown in the night before and gotten to the house around midnight, shortly after I'd gone to bed. "I have a question for you," she said.

"What's up?" I asked as I poured myself a cup of coffee.

"What would you say if I told you that I had an abortion three days ago?"

"Does Bryan know about this?"

She shook her head. "He can't know. It wasn't his baby. And he would have known that it wasn't his. So I had to get rid of it."

"You're not going to tell him about this at all?"

"Meghan, he wants to marry me. He asked me to marry him and I said yes. So I had to get rid of the evidence that I cheated on him."

I sighed. Rebecca was dating Bryan Hunter, young African-American congressman from Ohio. He was a great guy, probably better than my sister deserved. "You really need to talk to Bryan about this. Knowing him, the abortion isn't going to bother him nearly as much as lying would."

"I know he's pro-choice," she started. "And I don't think he'd be too angry about the abortion in general. But Meghan, I was cheating on him. And if I had the baby, he would know the minute the baby was born."

"How do you figure that?"

"The baby would be white. And Bryan is black."

"Becky, who have you been messing around with?" I asked.

"Have you ever met Dad's assistant, Evan?"

Evan Pickles lived up to his last name. "Evan, Becky, what were you thinking? He's such a male chauvinist pig. I don't know how Ellen puts up with him."

"I was drunk. Why else would I ever do that? Evan's forty, balding, and likes to talk about how much he loves living with his mother. He reminds me of Kurt on _Gilmore Girls_."

"Wow," I replied. "Becky, you need to talk to Bryan."

"He'll break up with me."

"So you're going to marry him and lie to him for the rest of your life?"

She laughed. "Heavens, no, who said I was going to be married to Bryan for the rest of my life? He's just a starter husband. He's a good first husband. He's a politician, he's wealthy, and he's good-looking. He's the perfect starter husband. And then my second husband will be for fame and prestige. And my third husband will be for fun; he'll be the one I actually really love."

"You don't deserve Bryan," I told her.

"Ellen thinks it's a good idea."

I sighed. My stepmother was giving Rebecca marriage advice; now that was just something I would advise against. A woman who had been divorced once and rarely lived with her current husband was not someone who should be giving a girl who wanted to have a starter husband advice about her marriage plan. I think the only person who would really be qualified to give my sister advice would be a highly trained therapist. Connor and I had both found that seeking some psychological help had helped us after our tumultuous upbringing. I was still in therapy and I still had a way to go. But I was getting somewhere. I had started therapy at Connor's recommendation after breaking up with Greg. Connor and Jessica had thought it might help me to spend time getting to know myself and my strengths and weaknesses.

* * *

A few days later, Rebecca publicly announced her engagement to Bryan. Seeing their warm smiling faces at the engagement party a few weeks later, I knew that she was still lying to him. I loved my sister but I didn't know what to do with her. She couldn't keep lying to people like this. And she couldn't keep using people like this. Bryan deserved more than lies and games and promises of a divorce when he'd worn-out his usefulness. And the worse part was that he didn't know what he was being dragged into. Rebecca was turning into our father. But she was doing it faster and in a more intense way. My little sister was turning into a monster that was scaring me. Most people didn't get married with the plan to get divorce a few years later when they no longer needed their spouse. But then most people didn't get married with the plan of using their spouse as a means to an end.

That same night, I found out that my younger brother had enlisted in the Marine Corps. "It's what I really want to do," he told me. "I love the idea of duty, honor, and service for one's country. I want to do something noble and honorable."

"Have you told Dad yet?"

"Yes," he said with a grimace.

"What did he say?"

"He told me to go fuck myself."

"That's Dad for you."

"Yeah, I know." He looked around the room and then grabbed my arm. "Meg, listen; just to warn you, Greg Fenton is here."

"What the hell is he doing here?"

"Apparently, he and Bryan have known each other since kindergarten and are really good friends."

I nodded. "Well, then I'll just hope to steer clear of him."

* * *

In early July of 2007, I found myself in the Walsh Mansion just outside of Chicago, Illinois for a party celebrating the engagement of my childhood best friend, Bryan Hunter, to Rebecca Walsh, the younger sister of my ex-girlfriend. So I was in the same house as the girl who had broken my heart a year and a half earlier. I managed to avoid her most of the evening. I had seen her across the room numerous times and she was absolutely gorgeous. She was wearing a black sleeveless form fitting dress that fell to around her knees and her dark brown hair was styled in a perfect bun. "She looks like a political clone wife," Connor Walsh said, coming to stand beside me. He took a sip of champagne and pointed to his dark-haired sister. "How many times have you seen Elizabeth Edwards or Cindy McCain wearing a dress that looks just like that one? And I've seen dozens of female politicians or the wives of male politicians wearing their hair like that. She looks like a clone."

I smiled. "But it's her choice to dress the way she wants."

"Not really," he replied. "Ellen picked that dress out for her and probably did her hair too. This isn't just an engagement party. This marriage is about the union between two powerful political groups. You have my father, who represents the old men Democrats, and Bryan, who represents the next generation of Democrats. You have my father who was a college student in the sixties protesting for the Civil Rights Movement. And then there's Bryan who got where he is today because of the Civil Rights Movement. In Dad's eyes, it's the perfect political marriage. And now he's trying to show Meghan off to the rest of the young Democrats, dangling her like bait. It's a way to lure them in. Marry my daughter and work with me in Congress. Poor Bryan has no clue what he's getting himself into."

"Just marrying into our family is a nightmare," Benjamin said, joining our conversation. "We're all dysfunctional."

"That sounds like the title of a tell-all autobiography or something," I told him.

Ben and Connor both smiled. "Meghan should write it," the older brother said. "She's the best writer of the family for one thing."

"And for another, she has the best understanding of just how screwed up this damn family is," Ben added. "She knows how manipulative and controlling Dad and Ellen can be."

"She's definitely not Dad's favorite child."

"You guys make her sound like a saint."

"She'd hate us for that," Connor remarked. "She thinks she's this awful, flawed person."

"Well, we're all flawed," I reminded them. "No one is perfect."

"Yes but you know my sister," Ben told me. "She has a really low opinion of herself. She doesn't know how amazing she is. She doesn't think she's smart or pretty or funny or anything like that."

I frowned. "So she hasn't changed."

Connor pursed his lips and shrugged. "It's complicated. She has changed. But I'm not sure. She has more work to do and she knows that. She's been through a lot in the past couple years. It's been the hardest time for her since Mom died."

"Because I broke up with her?" I asked.

Now it was Ben's turn to shrug. "Things with work, things with the family, it's been a lot of things. Dad's trying to find her a husband. But she's not sure she wants to get married. She says maybe she'll just stay single and adopt a million babies. She has this huge house now."

"Meghan owns the mansion now?"

"No, she just lives here rent-free. Ellen moved to Washington to be with Dad more and they didn't want to just leave the house empty or rent it out to someone," Connor explained. "So they're letting Meg live there for free. She's doing them a service and they're doing her a favor. It all works out in the end. But now that she's living there, Dad feels like that gives him license to try to set her out with any and all potential marriage prospects he thinks would be good for her. And he doesn't even know her well enough to find her a husband."

I smiled. "Yeah, I thought I was a good match for her but he apparently knew otherwise."

"That would be Dad and Ellen," Connor said. "They're all free-love and happiness as long as it doesn't interfere with their plans. But at heart, they're control freaks. They know exactly how they want our lives to be and if we don't follow their plans, they exile us."

"That's why he lives in New York City. He was exiled there," Ben quipped.

"Well, you'll be the next one to be exiled," his brother reminded him. "After all, I might have because a Republican but you're the one joining the Marines."

I looked at Ben. "When did this happen?"

"Last week," he replied. "I've been thinking about it for a while but I actually joined up last Wednesday."

I was stunned to find out that Benjamin Walsh was joining the Marines. I knew of politicians on both sides of the aisle whose children had joined the military. But I couldn't see James Walsh ever agreeing to any idea that involved his son joining the military. Walsh had once famously said that the military is a "useless and archaic institution that is no longer necessary in a civilized world. Perhaps in a less civilized society, it is still necessary. But in nations like the United States, we no longer need a military except to protect our borders and airports. As a nation, we are safe and secure. We only need a small guard force anymore."

Yeah and I look like Jude Law. I would love it if we lived in world where we had evolved beyond war. Unfortunately, I don't think that we as humans have evolved beyond the need for military. I would like to think that we would someday but I highly doubt that it will be in my lifetime. But be that as it may; I couldn't see a man who believed that we had evolved beyond the need for a military letting his son join the "useless and archaic institution." I was very curious to see what Senator Walsh would say publicly about Ben's decision to join the military. I knew that at some point in the near future he would have to make some sort of public statement, especially if Ben ever went into a combat zone or anything like that. I was curious to see how the whole family would react to that scenario. But I was more interested in this from the perspective of a journalist than as a friend. Does that make me a horrible person?

* * *

My class list for the fall of 2007 included James Murphy, Greg's nephew. I knew this day would come and I also knew that it probably wouldn't mean that I would actually see my ex-boyfriend. Greg was living in Connecticut while his sister and her family were living down the road from the Walsh Mansion. They moved there in August. Michelle's husband, Dave Murphy, was a few years older than his wife and was a doctor, the head of neurology at the Northwestern Memorial Hospital. So Michelle, Dave, and their three children were my closest neighbors. Audrey, who still loved me despite her sadness that I wouldn't be marrying her uncle, came over to visit me as often as possible. She brought James over with her a few times and she even dragged Katie over once or twice. But it was now nine-year-old Audrey who insisted on visiting me every day. Her mother was warm and friendly with me. I was amazed by how nice she could be to someone who had dumped her brother for no apparent reason. She even invited me over for dinner a few times. "You're a great girl, Meghan," she told me one night. "Just because you're not dating my brother anymore, that doesn't mean we can't be friends. I like you. I'm sorry things didn't work out between you and Greg. But I still like you and want to be friends with you. So come over for dinner. It'll be fun. Remember, the kids love you."

I spent quite a bit of time with Murphy family that August. And then Labor Day weekend, Greg Fenton and his mother came to stay with them because Michelle was about to give birth to another baby. As it happened, Jillian and Natasha were also in town that weekend. My stepsisters had never met Greg before; they'd only heard of him and seen pictures of him. So when they met him at dinner on Saturday night, they were both stunned. "Meghan, why did you guys break up?" Jill asked me. "He's gorgeous, absolutely stunning."

"There's more to a relationship than looks. You two should know that by now."

"Tasha might know that," she sassed with a toss of her long blond tresses. "But you know me. I don't do committed relationships. I just get my bit of fun and move on with things. Tasha, on the other hand, she has a boyfriend. "

I smiled and Tasha laughed. "You have a boyfriend?" I asked. We were in the kitchen getting things ready before dinner.

The darker-haired sister blushed. "She met him just before she graduated in April," her younger sister announced. "And he's extremely gorgeous. He's not as handsome as your old boy, Greg, out there. But he's a pretty damn hot looker."

"What's his name?" I asked. Tasha was still blushing and I was pretty sure that it would be Jillian answering the question again. Jill seemed to be very eager to tell me all about Tasha's new boyfriend while Tasha was playing with her cards closer to her vest. But that was the way Tasha and Jill had always been Jill was the warm, bubbly one who would tell you anything and everything while Tasha was calmer, quieter, and more restrained; she only told you what was truly important.

"His name is Justin Ormond," Tasha whispered to my surprise.

"And he's not into politics at all," Jillian announced. "He's Canadian."

"That doesn't mean that he isn't into politics," I told her. "He could be interested in Canadian politics. And there are Canadian-born politicians in the American system. The governor of Michigan was born in Canada."

"That's true," Jill replied. "But Justin just isn't interested in politics. That's why Tasha likes him."

"What does this non-political Canadian do with his life?" I asked Tasha who now had her left hand firmly clamped over her younger sister's mouth.

"He's a drummer," Tasha told me. "I met him at a club downtown where he was playing a set with his band. They're pretty good. They're kind of an underground grunge-punk type thing. I'm not really into that kind of music but I like Justin. He's a great guy. He's sweet and he gave me red lilies for my birthday."

"So when do we get to meet him?"

"I've already met him," Jill said.

I rolled my eyes. "Well, I want to meet him. What if I meet Tasha and Justin for drinks next Saturday?"

"You'll need a date," Jillian informed me.

"I'll find her a date," Michelle said coming into the room and immediately leaning back into the counter with one hand braced against the counter and the other resting on her swollen belly. "My god, I feel like a whale. I just want this baby out of me. So when does the elegant Miss Walsh need a date?"

"Next Saturday," Tasha replied. "She's going out for drinks with my boyfriend and me."

"I'm too pregnant to find you a date in the next week. Maybe Dave has a resident who would be interested in you."

She called her husband into the kitchen. Dave Murphy listened as his wife and Tasha frantically explained the situation to him. Then he scratched his bald head and laughed. "I'm afraid I can't help you ladies. I do have three male residents on my staff but two are married and the other one is a little creepy; I wouldn't set him up with someone I actually liked. Maybe Greg knows someone."

A few minutes later, Greg came into the room with Katie and James climbing over him. "What's up?"

"We need to find Meghan a boyfriend," Jillian informed him. "And we figured that since you're such a sophisticated, handsome, charming, debonair young man, you would know someone we could set her up with."

"She just needs a guy to go with her for drinks with Tasha and her boyfriend next weekend," Michelle told him. "It's nothing major or big."

"Feel free to say no," I interjected. "I know you're not from Chicago and you probably know that many people here. Plus, with our history, so don't stress about it."

He looked at me like I was some sort of weird three-headed alien and then shrugged. "Yeah, I don't really know that many people here. I do know this guy I work with at the newspaper. But I don't really talk to him much anymore. Mostly my secretary works with him. He's the guy in charge of distribution. And I don't know if he's single or anything. But maybe he would know someone."

"No, forget it," I said. "It's really not that big of a deal. I'll talk to some people at work or something. Or maybe I'll just come stag. It's just drinks to meet Tasha's boyfriend."

I wanted to vomit as I saw my stepsister running her fingers up and down my ex-boyfriend's arm. "Do you work out?" she asked him. "You have amazing muscles."

He pulled his arm away from her and shot her a weird look. I realized that at thirty-seven, Greg was about seventeen, almost eighteen, years older than my stepsister. He would be joining the AARP when she was in her early thirties. He wasn't much younger than her father. He was a senior in high school when she was born. Don't some girls find that sort of idea a little weird? I can't imagine marrying someone who was in high school or college when I was born. That's just weird.

* * *

Who the hell would ever ask a guy to set his ex-girlfriend up with some random guy just for one night? Hell could freeze over before I set Meghan up with anyone else. I wasn't going to get involved with the girl again. She clearly didn't want to deal with me ever again. And despite being thirty-seven years old, I could still get any girl I wanted. Heck, Meghan's stepsister, Jillian, seemed pretty interested in me. Okay, she was slightly touchy-feely and that was creepy. But I could get used to that. I'm a red-blooded American male and she was a young, gorgeous, blonde British girl. What more could a guy ask for? Okay, she was probably the kind of girl to whom you had to explain every joke in _Everybody Loves Raymond_. But she was a warm body and she was pretty and she wasn't horribly stupid. After all, she was studying to be a nurse and she wanted to join the Peace Corps. She was also a little ditzy. But a guy could live with that. After all, when you're getting close to forty, you start to feel old and realize that you're going to die someday soon. (These sorts of realizations are helped along by incidents such as your father's heart attack.) And I had always wanted to be a father and I wasn't getting any younger. I really just wanted to get married and have a family.

So if Jillian was willing to pay attention to me, I was more than willing to "rob the cradle." Meghan wasn't interested in me and I was going to show her that I'd moved on. The girl hurt me; why should I care if I hurt her? I was really starting to sound like a heartless asshole. Oh well, maybe I was getting cynical in my old age. Or maybe I was just a bitter jaded ex-boyfriend. I didn't really care. Jillian had told me that I reminded her of Cary Grant and he had always been her favorite actor. Meghan had snorted at the remark and I think I heard her mumble something about Cary Grant not being as skinny as me or something like that. But I took it in stride and ignored her. She was just jealous because I was paying attention to her much younger stepsister while she couldn't get a boyfriend or even a date for a casual evening of drinks.

Looking back, I should have remembered that old proverb about pride going before the fall. Maybe the fall would have been less painful if I hadn't put myself up on such a high pedestal.

* * *

A/N: Please review! I hope you like it.

And just to clear a few things up:

Rebecca Walsh is both Elizabeth Eliot and Mary Eliot-Musgrove at the same time. It's weird but trust me, please.

Jillian Parker-Daniels is Louisa and Natasha is Henrietta. Their mom is Sarah Russell. I explain more as things come up.


	5. Chapter 5

A/N: I don't own _Persuasion_.

**Chapter Five**

_What happens to a dream deferred?  
Does it dry up  
Like a raisin in the sun?  
Or fester like a sore--  
And then run?  
Does it stink like rotten meat?  
Or crust and sugar over--  
like a syrupy sweet?  
Maybe it just sags  
like a heavy load.  
Or does it explode?  
-__Langston Hughes_

* * *

By the end of September, my younger stepsister was dating my ex-boyfriend. Thankfully, work was keeping me busy, so I didn't have time to think about Jillian and Greg's relationship. I was also helping Rebecca plan her wedding, which was going to be at Christmas. And I was working on getting my master's degree in elementary education. So I had plenty of things to do besides worry about Jillian and Greg. Unfortunately, I had to see both of them on a pretty regular basis. By the end of October, Rebecca, Jillian, and Natasha had all moved into my house. And with the wedding coming up, Ellen was making regular trips to Chicago a lot more often. She was spending about ten to fourteen days every month in Chicago, helping out with the wedding. My sister had ordered me to be her maid of honor, which somehow involved me waiting on her hand and foot and planning her wedding for her. Rebecca was busy reading _Modern Bride_ and having her toenails done while I worked, cooked, cleaned, and made frequent trips to florists, bakers, caterers, and dress shops. I was planning my sister's wedding to a man she did not deserve and watching the man of my dreams woo my stepsister. At twenty-seven, I was alone in the world. I did have friends but there's a difference between friends and family.

* * *

One Saturday in late October, I found myself working with Bryan and his groomsmen on picking out their tuxes while also dashing next door to help my sister with her dress fitting and getting fitted for my maid of honor dress. I was wearing a strapless navy blue floor-length gown that my sister had picked out for me. It was exactly the kind of dress that my sister would pick. It had embroidery and beading on the chest; it was very pretty and surprisingly I picked it out for myself. My sister knew that I liked things that were elegant but simple while she preferred things that were much fancier. Somehow we managed to find something that we both loved. She put her other bridesmaids, who included Jillian and Natasha, in simpler, plainer dresses but she wanted the maid of honor is something different. And the bride rules the wedding. Rebecca was having a very sophisticated wedding. Her colors were navy blue, cream, and black.

Bryan's groomsmen were his two brothers, Colin and Jeff, Greg Fenton, Rep. Jon Peters of Wyoming, my brother Benjamin, and three of his friends who I didn't know well. I would, however, like to mention that these three friends were all exceedingly handsome young men. Their names were Kevin Wong, Curtis Samuels, and Marshall Bartholomew. Kevin had gone to high school with Greg and Bryan. Curtis was Bryan's cousin. And Marshall was a friend of Bryan's from graduate school at Ohio State University. They were all really great, nice guys. Greg wasn't really talking to me unless it was absolutely necessary. However, he was paying plenty of attention to Jillian. They were spending plenty of time snuggling and whispering in corners. I was doing my best to ignore them but it was hard. "You look like you're in desperate need of hard liquor," Jon said to me at the end of a very long, trying day as we were finally walking out of the tux shop. I'd run back and forth between the bridal salon and the tuxedo shop probably fifteen or twenty times. I'd been stabbed with pins and poked and prodded by seamstresses. I'd had to communicate between my sister and the seamstresses and my sister and her fiancé. I just wanted to curl up in my bed with a plate of spaghetti, a glass of white zinfandel and a movie like _North and South_ or maybe an episode of _Robin Hood_ or _What Not to Wear_.

"Hard liquor sounds amazing," I told him. "But I'm starving."

"I say we go out for dinner," Kevin suggested. "And you can't argue with us. I'm paying for you."

I smiled as Jon took my right arm and Kevin took my left. "Who else is coming?" Jon yelled to the gathering crowd of bridesmaids and groomsmen.

"Becky and I are going out alone," Bryan told us as he and my sister left in his car.

"I'd like to go," Greg said.

"But baby, I wanted to go out just the two of us," his girlfriend protested.

"I wanted to hang out with the guys."

"It's not just the guys though," she told. "Meghan is going."

"So you could keep her company."

"I'm coming too," Tasha said, in an attempt to encourage her sister to join us.

But it backfired. "Yeah, Tasha can keep Meghan company," Jillian whined. "I want to spend time with my baby."

It was hard to imagine a twenty-year-old girl calling a thirty-seven year old man "my baby." He was so much older than her. Maybe I just wanted my ex-boyfriend back. Maybe I was jealous. Or maybe I just didn't like the idea of my stepsister dating my ex-boyfriend. The age gap might have been bothering me too. I wasn't really sure what I thought anymore. Greg probably wasn't interested in me anymore. He had a young blonde darling now. Who needed me when you could have the younger, prettier model?

"I'm going with everyone else," Greg said. "Jill, you can come with us. Or you can come spend time alone. It's your choice; I don't care."

"You don't care about me?" She stomped her foot and put her hands on her hips. With her lower lip extended, she looked like a seven-year-old girl who had just been told she could watch a PG-13 movie with her older siblings.

"I care about you but I'm not going to miss out on a chance to hang out with my friends just because my girlfriend wants to snuggle and cuddle like a pair of teenagers. I'm thirty-seven years old and I want to go out for dinner and drinks with my friends."

"But I'm not twenty-one yet," she protested. "Everyone else will be drinking and I'll be sitting there with root beer feeling left out."

"You'll live," he told her. "It's what happens when you date an older man."

* * *

I genuinely liked Jillian. She was a great girl and really attractive. But she was kind of dumb and ditzy at times. And she was so dramatic about everything. Every little incident was a national emergency. She hated it when I wanted to go out with friends and there was a possibility that we might be having drinks because then she felt left out. The night of our tux fittings most of the wedding party went out for dinner but Jillian didn't want to go because she was too young to drink. She didn't go; I wanted to go but let her manipulate me into staying with her. So she and I went out to dinner at some cutesy little Italian joint while everyone else went to Meghan's favorite restaurant. And Bryan's friends were flirting with my ex-girlfriend. I saw the way Kevin looked at her. I saw the way Jon had held her arm. I had seen the look in Marshall's eyes when Meghan had been helping him during his tux fitting. Didn't they know that she had been my girlfriend for a year and a half? I had loved her. I had been planning to ask her to marry me. But then something had happened and she had run away from me. Her family had gotten to her and destroyed everything we had.

And that was needling my brain. Why was the Walsh family so concerned about getting rid of me when I was with Meghan but they didn't care about it at all when I was with Jillian? Maybe they thought she was too young to be serious with anyone. It seemed as though they viewed me as disposable, a problem that would simply vanish. Or was the bigger issue the fact that Meghan was James Walsh's biological daughter while Jillian was simply a stepdaughter? But it had been Ellen Parker-Daniels who had driven the final knife into my relationship with Meghan. So why weren't these people pushing me away as hard this time? I couldn't figure it out. I'd been allowed to meet both Ellen and James in the past few months. James was gruff, cold, and insulting while Ellen was condescending and fake, enthusing over stupid little details of my life that I really don't give a shit about. She found a way to talk to me for at least fifteen minutes about my niece's goldfish. I'd rather talk about my nieces and nephews than their pets. I love being an uncle; it's better than being a parent. When the kids start screaming or need discipline, you just hand them back to their parents and go back to playing with your dog. But I would like to get married. But if Jillian is just playing a game, why am I with her? Am I really just using this girl to get back at her stepsister or do I really like her? I think I like her. But I'm not sure what my motives are or what hers are. After all, she must know about my relationship with her sister. The whole thing is too damn confusing.

* * *

"Greg, you need to come to Chicago more often," Jillian told me at Thanksgiving. I had convinced her to come to Connecticut to meet my parents. To my chagrin, my girlfriend had declared my home state "boring" and "pathetic." "There's just nothing to do here."

"Jill, we're close to New York. If you want to go there, you can just ask me. I'd love to take you down there and spend some time there."

"I want to go someplace where I can legally drink. Let's go to Paris."

"When?"

"Now," she replied. "Let's just pick up and go. And don't worry about the cost. We'll just stick it to James's account. He's always paying for things like that."

"Jillie, you have classes next week and I have to work."

"Oh, Greggy, don't be such an old man. No one really cares about that shit. I just have to make it back in time for my finals. My stepdad or my dad will take care of everything. You forget. My family is rich and powerful." She placed one pale, delicate, perfectly manicured hand on my chest. "And besides, I love you, darling." She kissed my neck and then began working her way up to my lips. "Just relax, baby, and let's do what I want. I know what I want and I know what I'm doing."

"Jillian, I can't go to Paris right now. If we do that, it'll have to wait until after the wedding. I'm Bryan's best man. I can't leave town until after their wedding."

"Then let's go in January."

"You start clinicals then."

"You're so boring. You're just like Meghan and Ben and Connor; you always worry about the future or stupid stuff like money or other old people crap like that. I just want to have fun. I'm young. And besides, baby, you only live once."

As I listened to her babble, I was reminded of watching _The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers_ with Meghan about a year or so ago. She had said the Gandalf's line "Be silent, and keep your forked tongue behind your teeth. I did not travel through shadow and death to bandy crooked words with a witless worm!" reminded her of her father and stepmother. Now I was starting to wonder if that forked tongue was genetic in the Parker-Daniels family. I was starting to see what Meghan meant when she said that Rebecca was truly her father's daughter. Bryan Hunter was a great guy and one of my oldest friends. And he did not in any way deserve what his fiancée was putting him through. She was using her sister and him. She was using Bryan to get ahead politically. Of course, he also stood to gain from being married to James Walsh's daughter. But I had known Bryan for years and he wasn't like that. Rebecca, however, was. Whenever I was near them I saw her manipulate him and torment him. He doted on her, buying her gifts and complimenting her on her appearance. He was charming and she was vicious, accusing him of a thousand and one different offenses. Her coffee wasn't warm enough or sweet enough. He was three minutes late or two minutes early. He was walking too fast or running too slow. His clothes were too nice or his hair was too messy. I couldn't be in a relationship like that. I couldn't be hounded or harassed by my life partner. I needed to be independent, my own person.

* * *

Bryan and Rebecca were having their wedding in Washington D.C., at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. Bryan had been raised Methodist and Rebecca had obviously been raised Catholic. She wanted to get married in a Catholic ceremony and in "the prettiest church on this side of Notre Dame." Apparently that church was the Basilica in Washington. So they were having a Catholic ceremony, no Mass because Bryan wasn't Catholic and didn't want a mass, the Saturday after Christmas. I was going to be the best man and Meghan would be the maid of honor. And then there were seven other bridesmaids and seven other groomsmen. "It's a lot of money and production for a fifteen or thirty minute ceremony," Colin Hunter had remarked during our tux fitting. "You have to get this nice tux or fancy dress just for a short ceremony and then pictures afterwards."

"But then there's the reception later on," I had reminded him. "And you'll have to wear your formal attire to that as well."

"Yeah, and my brother is making me pay for my own tuxedo."

"The girls all have to buy their own dresses," I told him.

"No, Becky's stepmom is buying Jill and Tasha's dresses. Meghan and most of the other bridesmaids are buying their own. But Ellen is buying Jill's and Tasha's dresses and my parents are buying Cora's and Jenna's dresses for them."

"Why are Becky's parents buying Jill's and Tasha's dresses but not Meghan's?"

He shook his head. "Meghan told me that her dad told her she could afford to pay for her own dress because she graduated from college five years ago and she has a job."

"Doesn't Tasha have a job?"

"Yeah but she only graduated a year ago," Colin told me with a laugh and a smile. "So she doesn't have as much money as Meg."

I shook my head. "But Tasha is an accountant at one of the top firms in Chicago. She makes more money in a month than Meg does in a year."

"Greg, I can't explain it. This is the Walsh family. When you look dysfunctional up in the dictionary, there is a picture of the Walsh family celebrating some electoral victory."

I laughed, thinking of a time when Meghan had told me that. I had frequently heard her talk about the problems her family had. "They're a modern family," I told him. "There are plenty of families today that have been made up of families broken by divorce.

"They're different," Colin told me. Colin was Bryan's younger brother; he was thirty-two. "Bryan asked Becky if she wanted to have Hannah and Aidan as a flower girl and a ring-bearer. She told him not to be stupid; she wasn't close enough to Connor that she would have those brats in her ceremony."

"But they are having Jeff's kids in the wedding," I mentioned.

He shrugged. "We're close in our family. But they're not. As a couple, that will be rough when they have kids. He's going to want to take the kids to see all their aunts and uncles and grandparents. But is might not be as important to her. And that can create tensions in a marriage." He looked at me with a firm, solemn face. "Trust me, Greg. I'm married. Sahara's family isn't close at all. When Kaitlyn was born, Sahara couldn't understand why it was so important to me that we take her to see her grandparents all the time, and we fought about it. But by the time Michaela and Jayden came along, she was more understanding of my opinions and my family. And she was much more willing to get involved in Hunter family functions and let the kids get involved in the family."

"But to argue against Bryan, Becky might point out Jeff's family. His kids don't get to see Safiya's family very much."

Colin sighed. His older brother had married a woman he had met while working at the U.S. embassy in Jordan. Safiya and Jeff had moved back to the U.S. and they only saw her parents about once a year due to distance and expense. "I'm not going to argue with you about this. You know that my family is big on family while Becky's family isn't. And you'll just have to remember that if you're going to keep messing around with Jillian."

"I'm dating her," I retorted. "It's a pretty serious relationship."

"She's twenty years old. Dude, she can't even legally buy booze in this country."

"She'll be twenty-one next October."

"Oh my god, you need help, Fenton. Go play with girls your own age and stop robbing the damn cradle. You look like you're having a mid-life crisis or something pathetic like that. You're going to hate me for this, but we've been talking about you."

The hair on my spine bristled. "Who might 'we' consist of?"

"Jeff, Bryan, Kevin, and me," he replied simply. "We think you need to work things out with Meghan. She'd be great for you."

"She doesn't want to be with me."

"No, jackass, her family doesn't want you to be with her. She is just one of those girls who have a hard time standing up for herself. So people push them around and take advantage of them. Gosh, moron, get your head out of your ass." Then he had smacked me upside the head.

* * *

That was at the end of October. I didn't take his advice; I think that's obvious. When we all arrived in Washington D.C. the day after Christmas, I was still dating Jillian. Natasha was still dating her boyfriend, Justin Ormond. He seemed nice; I didn't really know him that well. And there was definitely something going on between Meghan and Kevin. Marshall was flirting with her endlessly. Jon Peters was being really nice to her. Even Curtis, who I was pretty sure had a girlfriend, was giving my ex-girlfriend the eye. "Kevin and Meghan are so cute," Jillian told me one day. "And their kids would look a lot like Connor's kids. I never knew Meg had an Asian fetish."

"Maybe she and Kevin just connect at an intellectual level," I told her. "And physical attraction came later."

"That's stupid. Everyone knows that it's always physical attraction first. You know you think I'm hot."

I sighed. "I think you're absolutely gorgeous," I told her. "But I also love your brain."

"Brains are useless," she replied.

Thankfully, Meghan and Kevin crossed the hotel lobby to talk to us just then.

* * *

"So do you actually like Kevin or do you just have an Asian fetish?" Jillian asked me at dinner the first night we were all in D.C. for Becky's wedding.

I looked at Kevin Wong who was standing across the hotel dining room talking to Bryan and his brothers. "Jill, he was engaged to Curtis's sister until less than a year ago."

"Then what happened?" she asked.

I rolled my eyes; we had discussed this back in October at the dress and tux fittings. "Alexis died in a car accident on Valentine's Day," I told her. "Kevin was heart-broken."

"So what do you two talk about?"

"We argue about poetry," I replied, adjusting my ponytail. "He's a high school teacher so we talk about that kind of stuff. We both like jogging, so we talk about that. We're both total dorks, so we talk about _The Lord of the Rings_ and other things like that."

"Oh, that sounds boring. Justin and Tasha at least talk about music and exciting things like that."

I smiled and shrugged as I prayed for someone to come and rescue me from my stepsister and her inane conversation. Just then, Cora and Jenna Hunter came over, followed by Allyson Fox and Mira Kralewski; we now had six of the eight bridesmaids in one bunch. Tasha was dealing with Dad and Ellen and Marina Lee was over talking to the guys, including her boyfriend Curtis. "Are you ready for this?" Jenna asked me.

I looked at her. "My little sister is getting married before me. Do you think I'm ready?"

She shrugged with a smile. "I think you're prettier than she is. But you didn't hear that from me."

I hugged her. "I knew I liked you for a reason."

"I'm cute," she replied.

Bryan's younger sisters were both about my age and I loved them both dearly. They had warm personalities and were friendly. The whole Hunter family was like that; they were warm, loyal, and friendly. Bryan might have been a politician but he had learned a lot from his mother's warm, Southern hospitality and his father's strong, intense passion for life. Everyone who entered Norm and Lily's front door was offered a place to sit, a beverage suitable to the temperature, and food. And anyone who had ever met Lily Hunter knew that she was the best cook north of the Mason-Dixon Line, and that was only because her mother still lived in Atlanta. And Lily and Norm had raised their five children to treat the rest of the world the same way they treated their family members. I would have loved to have married into their family but Jeff and Colin were both married already. But I was enjoying all the attention I was getting from the single groomsmen. And there were three of them, all of whom were quite handsome.

Speaking of quite handsome, my younger brother looked amazing in his dress uniform. He was talking to Greg Fenton and Jeff Hunter. His GI-issue crew-cut and neat and crisp uniform only accentuated his natural good looks. "He is a dream," Mira said looking over at him. "He's so handsome."

"He's my brother," I told her.

Mira, Rebecca's closest friend, laughed. "I know, but he's just so cute. How did your brother get to be so handsome?"

"He joined the Marines."

"I love a man in uniform," she sighed. "It's just so inspiring. They're so powerful and noble and honorable. It's like a knight in shining armor fantasy or something."

I smiled. "Mira, please stop talking about my brother like that. It's really awkward."

"Jill thinks he's hot."

"Yeah, that's also awkward."

* * *

A few minutes later, I went over to Kevin. "I am in desperate need of hard liquor."

"You seem to have this problem a lot," he told me.

"My younger sister is getting married and I'm really single at twenty-seven," I told him.

He handed me the glass of scotch he was holding. "Drink up, girlie. It's going to be a long week."

I smiled and swallowed the scotch. "I refuse to get drunk at any point this week, but I'm going to need something to get me through this week. And I have a feeling that the only things that will help me are alcohol and sex. Kevin, I'm not the type of girl who just has random one night stands. But I am Irish and I will drink my sorrows away."

He smiled. "I'm half-Korean, half-Dutch."

"No special drinking privileges for you," I told him. "I, however, am allowed to shoot back Irish car-bombs, guzzle Guinness, shoot shots of Bailey's, and otherwise make like a loose Irishwoman."

Kevin laughed. "I'm jealous."

"Well, at least you're allowed to drink," I told him. "Jill isn't even old enough to drink legally."

"And yet she's dating a thirty-seven year old," he remarked. "I know Bryan is thirteen years older than Becky but there's something different between that and the relationship between Jill and Greg. They're just wrong for each other."

"I know," I said as I sadly sipped at the whiskey sour I'd just gotten from the bartender. "But what can I do? I'm her supposedly idiot sister and his ex-girlfriend. I'll just look like a jealous bitch."

"Meghan, I wish you could get him back."

"He doesn't want me back," I replied. "It's over between us whether I like it or not. I'm a stupid girl who made a mistake. And I'll have to pay for it for the rest of my life."

"Well, I loved a girl with all of my heart and lost her to a drunk driver. I don't know what I'm supposed to do anymore."

I rubbed his shoulder. "Langston Hughes once asked what happens to a dream deferred."

"It destroys the dreamer," he replied.

* * *

A/N: Please review!


	6. Chapter 6

A/N: I don't own _Persuasion_. And I'm really grateful to all my reviewers. Please keep it up; I need it.

**Chapter Six**

"_If thou could'st empty all thyself of self, _

_Like to a shell dishabited,_

_Then might He find thee on the ocean shelf, _

_And say, "This is not dead,"_

_And fill thee with Himself instead._

_But thou are all replete with very thou_

_And hast such shrewd activity,_

_That when He comes He says, "This is enow_

_Unto itself - 'twere better let it be,_

_It is so small and full, there is no room for me."_

_-Sir Thomas Browne _

* * *

Wednesday evening, around nine o'clock, I was lying on my bed wearing jeans and a Notre Dame sweatshirt when someone pounded on my door. I had been relaxing and reading A Hundred Years of Solitude after a long day of listening to my sister's struggles with various pre-wedding decisions. She was still struggling over petty last minute details as well as trying to find a song for her first dance with Bryan and another song for her dance with Dad. "And Bryan already has his song for his dance with Lily. I'm so fucked, Meghan," she told me. "You've got to help me."

However, she was not interested in any of my numerous suggestions for wedding songs, which ranged from Journey's "Faithfully" to Elvis's "I Can't Help Falling in Love with You" to "The Sleeping Beauty Waltz" to Nat King Cole's "L-O-V-E" or Frank Sinatra's "The Way You Look Tonight." I was really running out of ideas, so I was listening to every song on my iPod that might even be remotely considered as being about love. And then someone started pounding on my door at nine o'clock in the evening when all I really wanted to do was read, listen to some music, and sleep. So after pausing my iPod and putting a bookmark in my book, I ran to the door. I opened it to find Greg Fenton on the other side, talking to someone on his cell phone. I was pretty sure he had come to the wrong room until he closed his phone and sighed. "Thank God it's you, Meghan," he breathed with a smile. "I need someone sane and normal."

I was confused and I made no efforts to disguise that. "What's up, Greg?"

"Can I come in?" he asked. He was running his hands through his hair and looking both bewildered and overwhelmed.

I nodded and stepped aside. "What's wrong?"

He sat down on my bed and took a deep breath. "Your sister is crazy, Meghan. She's absolutely insane."

"Rebecca?" I asked. "I know she's been a bit of a bridezilla of late but it's all almost over."

"No, not her," he said. "She's nuts but the one I'm dating is much worse."

I looked at him. "Greg, I'm your ex-girlfriend. You're not supposed to be asking me for relationship advice."

"Yeah, well, you're the only one here I trust."

"Again, I'm your ex-girlfriend. I dumped you. You're not supposed to trust me."

He laughed and ran his hands through his hair again. "Meg, we've never had a normal relationship. You're my nephew's teacher and my sister's neighbor. We occasionally have to get along."

"That doesn't mean you have to trust me," I replied, sitting down on the other bed. I didn't understand why I needed two beds. But this was the room my sister had booked for me and my parents were paying for it. So I took what I had and didn't argue; there were enough arguments and stresses that week.

"Whatever," he sighed. "I trust you and I need your help with your sister."

I sighed. "What's going on?"

"She wants to bungee jump off the Eiffel Tower."

I rolled my eyes. "Well, she can't."

"I know. But when we told her she couldn't do that, she decided she wanted to bungee off the top of the hotel."

I sighed. "She always was a daredevil. When she was about eleven she broke her leg jumping from the second floor to the first floor. She wanted to fly like an angel."

He laughed. "But let's be serious, Meghan. I know your sister looks up to you and respects you. Can't you help me with her? No one else wants to take her seriously; they think she's just kidding. But Jill seems so serious about this. I think she really wants to do this."

I took a deep breath. "A couple of years ago, Jill's old therapist labeled her as 'attention-seeking.' She's always been like this. The day she jumped from the railing into the foyer was a couple days before my graduation party. The house was busy and bustling with all the preparations for the crazy party Ellen and my dad were planning. They had this huge bash and it was the one time in my life that all the attention in the house was on me. And no one was paying attention to Rebecca or Jillian, so they both started acting out."

"Drama queens," he sighed.

I laughed. "That's my family. It's just a bunch of crazy drama queens."

"You weren't like this."

"Oh, Greg, I'm the black sheep of the family. I'm just the emotionally inhibited pushover of the family. I let them boss me around because I'm afraid to express my emotions. This is a detriment to my personal relationships and my career."

"That sounds like you're quoting someone," he said.

"My therapist," I replied. "I started seeing her right after we broke up."

"How's that going for you?" he asked, seeming to have momentarily forgotten about my sister.

"It's good," I said with a nod. "I think Jillian should go back to her. She's doing me a lot of good and I think she'd be good for Jill too."

"Well, if we can get her off that roof, we can recommend this brilliant person to her."

I shook my head. "We'd have to find her someone else. She doesn't like my therapist. She thinks she's a lesbian and that freaks her out."

"Hold it," he said as I grabbed my jacket and room key. "Does Jill think the therapist is a lesbian or does the therapist think your stepsister is a lesbian?"

I laughed as I opened the door. "Jill thinks the therapist is a lesbian. But the therapist is actually married and has three kids. But I think Jill just doesn't want to see any therapist."

He smiled. "That sounds like your sister."

"Where is the darling anyway?"

"I'm not sure. She was talking about bungee jumping off the roof."

"I know," I said. "So where would she be?"

"Probably in her room or on the roof," Greg replied. "What should we do first?"

"Check her room," I said. "I'd like to err on the side of caution even when my instincts warn me against it."

"You think she's on the roof?" he asked, a note of fear creeping into his usually steady voice.

I pressed my lips together in a firm line. "Jillian is a great girl but she has a tendency to act out when other members of our family are in the spotlight. During Connor's wedding, she was horrible. She was making herself vomit all the time."

"Did she threaten to bungee off the roof of the hotel?"

I rolled my eyes. "We were staying in the Plaza Hotel. One does not bungee jump off the roof of the hotel. However, one can go sledding down the grand staircase."

"Why didn't anyone tell me how immature she was before we started dating?" he asked.

I stopped in front of the door to the room my stepsisters were sharing and knocked. "If I had told you, would you have listened to me?"

He bit his lip and shook his head. "Probably not, but aren't there other people who could have stopped me?"

"Ben and Connor," I said flatly. "Okay, so Jessica could have told you too. But they're my family. Would you have listened to them? I'm your ex-girlfriend. Who listens to their ex-girlfriend insult their new girlfriend and believes what she's saying?"

Greg bowed his head as I knocked on the door. No one answered and the door was firmly locked. I tried calling Jill's cell phone but no one answered. Then I dialed Tasha's number. She answered but told me she had no clue where her sister was. "She said she wanted to bungee jump off the roof but I don't know where she is or what she is doing now. She did tell me that she had a fight with Greg and she just wanted to get away from everything. Does that help?"

"A little," I said. "Greg told me that she wanted to bungee off the roof but yeah, we're looking for her now."

"I hope you find her, but I don't know where she is. Give me a call when you find her or if there's anything Justin and I can do to help."

"I will," I replied. "I'm not sure where she is but I'm guessing she's on the roof."

"Let me know what happens," she said.

"Definitely, see you later," I told my stepsister with a sigh.

"Nothing?" Greg asked as I closed my phone.

I nodded. "She told me that you and Jill had a fight, which you didn't tell me."

"It was over the whole bungee-jumping thing," he replied. "She thinks I'm a stick in the mud and a stupid old man."

I smiled. "Well, you are an old man."

He shot me the evil eye and led me to the hotel roof.

* * *

We did find Jillian and some bungee-jumping equipment on the house. "I'm going to jump and you can't stop me," she announced when we found her.

"Okay, but I bet Becky will be pissed," Meghan calmly replied. "She's being a control freak about her wedding and she really wants you to be one of her bridesmaids."

"I'm not going to get hurt, moron. I've done this before."

"Yeah, but you've always had professionals to help her, not just some crap you find in Dad's apartment."

"I know what I'm doing. Just shut up and let me do this. Greg, tell Meghan that she's stupid."

I crossed my arms across my chest. I didn't have a coat, unlike Meg, and I was cold. I was just wearing jeans and a dress shirt and that wasn't much against the cold. "I'm not going to tell her she's stupid. I don't think she's stupid."

"But she is," Jill whined. "She doesn't want me to bungee jump."

"Well neither do I," I told her.

"My god, you two are such boring old lame-asses. I'm going to bungee-jump and you two can't stop me."

I pulled Meghan closer to me. "How do you plan on stopping on her?"

"I'm working on it," she said. "I'm trying to talk her into staying with us."

"You guys can't stop me. I want to bungee jump off the roof of this hotel and you can't stop me," Jill yelled as she fastened the harness around her torso.

Meghan ran towards her stepsister as Jillian ran towards the edge of the building. Unfortunately, Jillian was closer to the edge than Meghan was to her. I reached the edge as Meghan stood there gripping the cement watching her stepsister plummet towards the ground. I found my hands wrapping around Meghan's waist and pulling her trembling body close. It felt like a million years passed by as I screamed "Jillian!" The cord jerked taut and Meghan started whispering "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee…"

I pulled her closer and squeezed her as closer as I could, mumbling the words I'd memorized in first grade along with her. I waited for Jillian to bounce back but as the seconds ticked by her body just hung there. I could hear her screaming but the words were lost in the wind. Meghan's fingers were fumbling with her cell phone. "I can't do it," she mumbled, pushing it and her head into my chest.

Then, she took a deep breath and dialed quickly, running towards the door to the stairs. As I followed her at a much slower pace, I could hear her talking to the 911 operator. A crowd, including various members of the wedding party, had gathered around Jillian, who had been cut down by the fire department. "They're taking her to the hospital," Benjamin told me.

"Where's Meg?"

"She's going to the hospital with Jillian."

I nodded. "I want to go too."

"I'm driving Natasha over. You can come with us."

"I want to go in the ambulance with Jillian and Meghan."

He shook his head. "Just come with me. They're getting ready to leave. You can talk to Jillian later."

I didn't want to talk to Jillian. I wanted to talk to Meghan and get to understand things. I was worried about her and I wanted to know how she was doing. We had both just seen something horrific and I was still physically shaking. I had held Meghan's shaking body when Jillian was falling and I was worried about her. So I eventually found myself in the back seat of Ben's dad's car as we drove to the hospital. Tasha was alternately chewing on her fingernails and frantically sending text messages to her stepfather, her mother, her dad back in England, and a thousand other people who might need to know about the accident. "What the fuck was she thinking?" she asked the air at one point.

"Where's Justin?" Ben asked his stepsister as he gave her knee a squeeze.

"How should I know? He was supposed to go talk to my parents or call Connor or talk to Becky. I don't remember. What was Jill thinking? She just ruined Becky's wedding. If she isn't dead, Becky will kill her."

Her stepbrother squeezed her knee. "It'll be fine," he said calmly.

"Why does she always have to be the center of attention? Why is she so selfish?"

That was the first time I'd ever heard Tasha say anything against Jillian and I'd spent a lot of time around the two of them in the past three or four months. They seemed to have the perfect sister relationship. They seemed to mutually adore each other and have this perfect relationship that no one on earth could ever achieve. But over the next several weeks, I would see that façade crumble their relationship was laid bare for the world to see. Jillian's "accident" combined with her stepfather's prominent position in American politics and her mother's fame as a writer made the family instant tabloid fodder. Becky's wedding pictures were suddenly worth millions because they showed her off as the "cold-hearted bitch of the political world" when she refused to postpone her wedding because of her sister's hospitalization. Connor and Meghan were both the subject of in-depth analyses by various publications due to their "conservative leanings" as _U.S. News and World Report_ put it. Benjamin and his father made the front cover of _Time_ because Senator Walsh was supporting his son in his military career. "I may not agree with President Bush for getting us into this Iraq war. But I will always support our brave boys in uniform. My father fought in World War II and I am so proud of my son, Benjamin, for following in his footsteps."

* * *

During those months following Jillian's jump, I grew more and more protective of my ex-girlfriend. This isn't to say that Jill and I just broke up and I got back together with Meghan. Jillian and I did break up quickly but getting back together with Meghan was a much more insurmountable mountain. I saw her regularly when I visited Michelle and her family, but that didn't mean that things between us changed easily. We gradually became friends, very good friends, but nothing more for a long time. I grew to like her and respect her more. But I also watched as her family pushed at her more and more. Rebecca was "married and out of the way" in her father's words. Tasha and her boyfriend, Justin, were pretty serious. Ben was busy with the Marines. Connor had been married for a while. Jillian was "out of control and needed serious help and supervision." And so Meghan became her parents' project. James and Ellen were determined to find their oldest daughter a husband before 2012. And why was 2012 so important? Well, if the Democrats lost the 2008 election, Senator Walsh planned on running for office himself. But first he needed to find ways to neutralize Meghan, Connor, and Benjamin. Benjamin was easy to write off to a sense of duty and honor. Connor could be explained by saying that "every family needs its eccentrics." But Meghan, well, they thought that it would take a man to neutralize the threat of Meghan.

* * *

My stepsister was bloody, bruised, and unconscious when we arrived at the hospital. The doctors and nurses pushed me aside and I found myself sitting alone in the waiting room clutching my coat and mumbling the prayers of the Rosary to myself. I sat there alone and afraid for quite some time. Finally, Benjamin burst through the sliding glass doors clutching the hand of a sobbing Tasha. They were followed by Greg who looked stunned and confused; he seemed to have the wind knocked out of him. While Tasha and Ben were rapidly firing questions at me, Greg just sat down next to me and wordlessly took my hand and held it. I didn't know why he did it but I just consented; I needed that hand. I needed someone to hang on to at that moment. I felt like I was losing control of myself and my life. Becky had already called me four times freaking out about her wedding. "Why the fuck did she do this three fucking days before my goddamn wedding?" she had yelled into my ear. "I'm getting married in three goddamn days and she just jumped off the roof of the fucking hotel. What the hell was she thinking? She just fucking ruined my wedding and my wedding pictures. I will kill her. I will tear her limb from limb."

That was her first call, which was right after I got to the hospital. Each phone call was more irate than the one before. There was more swearing in each successive phone call. I wanted to cry but I had to stay strong for Tasha. Ben had gone back to the hotel to pick up Dad and Ellen. And I still had Greg, holding my hand. I wasn't sure why he was doing that but he was. And I was appreciative. But I also felt like we were clinging to each other for dear life. An hour or so earlier we had watched my stepsister and his girlfriend plummet to the ground and now we were clinging to each other for dear life. I was afraid and worried. "She's in surgery," Tasha said. "What are they doing surgery on?"

"Maybe she broke her leg," I suggested. Greg's thumb was now tracing circles on the back of my hand and it occurred to me that this action was far more intimate than was appropriate for our relationship-or lack thereof. It wasn't generally considered to be acceptable for a woman to allow her ex-boyfriend to do something like this. But while I might not have been completely comfortable with this, I needed someone to comfort me and keep me grounded and alive. I couldn't be alone right now. And I didn't care who was with me; I just needed a warm, stable, body with a steady, caring hand. Greg might not have cared about me that much but he cared enough to let me know when my stepsister was being a moron and he cared enough to hold my hand as I waltzed my way through a nightmare.

* * *

Ellen was a whirlwind of emotion when she arrived while my father was immediately throwing money around, demanding information and details about Jillian. "I don't care if she's in surgery. I want to know everything you can tell me and I want you to tell me now," he yelled at the charge nurse. He pulled his checkbook out of his pocket as he demanded that she summon the doctor, immediately.

"He's in surgery, sir," the trembling woman said.

"I don't care if he's operating on Franklin Roosevelt himself. I demand to speak to the doctor immediately."

"Sir, he's operating on your daughter and he cannot simply leave her while he's operating on her."

Ben was shaking his head and Greg looked angry. And as Ellen took Tasha away from me, I was broke down crying. "I'm taking her home," Greg announced.

"But I have the only car here," Ben said. "And it's my dad's. He's not going to let you take his car anywhere even if you have my sister in the car."

"I'll catch a cab or something. I could call one of the other groomsmen; I'll figure something out. But Meghan looks exhausted and overwhelmed and uncomfortable. She doesn't need to be here. Your parents need to be here and Tasha can be here. Heck, you can even be here if you want. But I'm making an executive decision and taking Meghan back to the hotel and putting her to bed."

I watched as my brother-the-Marine grabbed Greg by the shoulder and dragged him over to a corner. My brother had quickly cornered my ex-boyfriend and was giving him a dressing-down. I knew that Greg's life was probably being threatened and what's more I knew that my brother owned multiple guns as well as his dress sword. I knew the speech Ben was giving Greg probably involved a reminder that Greg was dating Jillian who was currently in surgery. But Greg was right. I was tired. I wanted to climb into my bed and sleep for a century. Btu I knew that I was going to have to deal with Rebecca and her wedding, which was still going to be happening, as well as the aftermath of Jillian's attempt at bungee-jumping.

I really just wanted to go to sleep and wake up in my bed in Chicago and go to work in the morning and teach first graders to read. Waking up married to Greg wouldn't make life any worse. But right now, I needed to focus on reality, not what I wanted. I was sick of my life and my family, but what else could I do? I loved my job. I had some great friends even though some days it really felt like my family was consuming my life. I was my sister's wedding planner and therapist. I was the go-between for my father and his sons. There were even times when I was carrier pigeon for my dad and Ellen or my dad and Rebecca. And I was sick of it. As Greg helped me to my tired and sore feet, I realized that I wasn't a member of this family; I was its slave. Ben and Connor might not have viewed me that way, but most of the family did.

"Come on, Meghan," Greg said, offering me his hand. I stood up without his help but then stumbled and fell into his arms. "No more booze for you," he joked but I didn't smile.

He put a strong, steady arm around my shoulders and held my right hand with his. I didn't want to lean against him but I needed support. I was too tired to walk on my own anymore. "Where are we going?" I asked.

"You're going back to the hotel. You're going to get some sleep."

"But how are we going to get there?" I asked as he led me out in to the cold late night.

"I called Bryan and he's coming to pick us up."

"Greg, I want my mommy."

He sighed. "Meghan, your mom died sixteen years ago."

"I know," I replied. "But I miss her. If she were here, she would know what to do. I'm twenty-seven years old and I'm pathetic."

"Meghan, we really need to get you back to the hotel and in bed," he said as Bryan pulled up at the curb. Greg had to maneuver me into the car; I was so tired I was losing my mind and my motor function. And my mouth seemed to be running of its own accord.

"Greg, I want my mommy."

He ran his hand through my hair and buckled me in. "Let's get you home and to bed."

"Okay," I replied before my head crashed down on his shoulder. That was the last thing I remembered.

* * *

I woke up the next morning still wearing my jeans and Notre Dame t-shirt. My room key was on the bedside table. My shoes were on the floor next to my bed and my coat was neatly folded on the table next to the microwave. I smiled when I read the note next to my coat.

Meg,

Sleep well and don't worry. Bryan and I will keep Becky off your back as long as we can.

Greg

* * *

A/N: Please review! I hope you guys enjoy it. I know I updated fast but I'm trying to get as much out as I can before I head back to school.


	7. Chapter 7

A/N: I don't own _Persuasion_. I love my reviewers though; you guys keep me going.

**Chapter Seven**

_Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, _

_Men were deceivers ever; _

_One foot in sea, and one on shore, _

_To one thing constant never. _

_Then sigh not so, _

_But let them go, _

_And be you blith and bonny, _

_Converting all your sounds of woe _

_Into Hey nonny, nonny. _

_Sing no more ditties, sing no mo _

_Of dumps so dull and heavy; _

_The fraud of men was ever so, _

_Since summer first was leavy. _

_Then sigh not so, _

_But let them go, _

_And be you blith and bonny, _

_Converting all your sounds of woe _

_Into Hey nonny, nonny. _

-William Shakespeare

* * *

Thursday morning, I went to the hospital after eating a quick breakfast. I needed to end my relationship with Jillian. I was done with that girl and her games. I might not be able to get back together with Meghan but I wasn't going to waste my life with other girls. Jillian wasn't someone who could support me in what I wanted to do. She didn't understand why I was a lawyer and a blogger. She thought all Americans should be Democrats. "You're so stupid," she told me once. "It's like you don't think anyone should have any rights."

"I'm a Republican," I told her. "I'm not the dictator of China."

So I went to see her to end our relationship. "You're in love with Meghan," she said when I sat down next to her bed.

"I honestly liked you, Jillian," I said. "But I think we're in different places in our lives. I think that you and I just weren't meant to be."

"You just want to break up with me so you can get back together with Meg. You guys had this great thing going on a couple years ago and you just want to get back together with her. You see how smart and hot and amazing she is and you want to get back with her. I'm just not right for you. But it's okay. You're really too old and boring for me. I want to do fun things, like bungee jump and have one night stands. You just want to get married and have kids. I need to finish school and do fun stuff. I'm just not into the whole serious relationship thing and you are. So go screw Meghan or whatever it is you want to do to her."

I sighed. "Jill, you're a great girl and I was attracted to you. But we're going different direction with our lives. And I'm not breaking up with you to get back together with Meghan. Whatever my feelings for your stepsister, she isn't interested in me. I can't just get back together with her."

"Greg, she totally adores you. She wants you; it's obvious. Every time you two are together everyone can see and feel the chemistry between you guys. We all just want you two to get back together and be this cute ultra-conservative Republican Catholic couple with a million babies."

My hands were covering my face and I wanted to scream. "Jillian, just let it go," I said. "Meghan and I will handle our relationship in our own time. If we're ever both in a good place to be together, we'll do it. We're going to have to take things slowly because your parents hate me."

"Oh that's just an act. They really love you."

Her stepfather's entrance two minutes later pretty much proved that he wanted me dead. James Walsh just glared at me as if he could use his eyes to turn me to ice or make me spontaneously combust. He never said a word to me, just glared at me. "Jillian, darling, how are you doing today?"

I slipped out of the room; I was clearly unwanted. So I decided to head back to the hotel and see what I could do to help with the wedding. Bryan and Rebecca had decided to go ahead with the wedding. They already had the church booked and all the guests were in town already. The reception hall and caterer and florist were all paid for. "We can't waste my parents' money like that," Rebecca had said that morning at breakfast. "If Jillian wants to be an idiot, that's her privilege but she's not messing up my wedding or my life."

I understood how she felt. I could also relate to those who felt that they should postpone the wedding. Mostly, I just wanted Jill to get better and things to work out for Bryan. And I wanted people to stop using or hurting Meghan. She deserved better than the Walsh family drama and stress. I wanted to see her laugh and smile. Even if I wasn't the one making her so happy, I wanted to see her happy. Her family wasn't doing that for her these days. Ben and Connor worked to make her happy but she didn't see them much. But she lived with her sisters and they used her and manipulated her. My sister told me things that people didn't think she saw. The Walshes didn't know everything that Michelle and her kids saw. But it was obvious, even to Katie, that "Mith Wulch" wasn't happy. Meghan deserved more than she got. Far too often she settled for less than the best, less than what she deserved. I wanted to be her knight in shining armor but maybe right now I just needed to be her friend. I think Meghan just needed a friend who could care about her and listen to her.

* * *

I walked into the hotel lobby to find Meghan Walsh sitting with Hannah and Aidan, her brother Connor's two older children. Connor and his wife also had a baby boy named Elijah who I hadn't met yet. I walked over to Meghan who was reading a story to her niece and nephew. "Are you babysitting before the wedding?" I asked.

Meghan looked up at me and laughed. "I've been exiled. Apparently, Connor and Jessica are currently preferable to me right now."

"What did you do?" I asked.

She shrugged. "I was not being the perfect yes-woman-maid of honor. I didn't tell her exactly what she wanted to hear or I didn't do something right. Who knows what happened?"

"Aunt Meggie got mad at Aunt Becky for saying naughty words in front of Aidan and me," Hannah announced.

I laughed. "Well, I would have to agree with Aunt Meggie."

"She's nicer than Aunt Becky," Aidan informed me. "We like her more."

"She plays with us," his older sister added.

"Can I play with you too?" I asked. "I should check if Uncle Bryan needs me but he might not."

"Uncle Bryan doesn't need you," the precocious Hannah announced. "He has all his other friends to help him keep Aunt Becky calm. You can play with us and take us out for lunch. We need you more than anyone else does."

I smiled as her aunt shook her head. "Hannah Clare Walsh, Mr. Greg does not have to take you out for lunch. But if Uncle Bryan doesn't need him, he can play with us."

"I'll call Uncle Bryan and then let you know what I can do."

"We'll keep reading here," Meghan told me. "Just let us know what you're going to do."

* * *

"Sorry, Greg, my fiancée is losing her mind. Go help Meghan with the kids; God knows she needs it. Oh, and tell her that apparently she is going to get stuck with Elijah too," Bryan told me.

"I'll come up and get Elijah. Where are you guys?"

"My hotel room," he replied.

"I'll be upstairs as I can get up there. Just let me tell Meghan what I'm up to."

* * *

A few minutes later, I was holding a sleeping Elijah Walsh while listening to his aunt Meghan read. She was reading them fairy tales from a book of Disney fairy tales or as Hannah called them, "pretty princess stories." Hannah was at the age where all she wanted from life was to be Cinderella. I understood this pretty well considering that my three-year-old niece, Katie, wanted to be Mulan. Of course, Katie looked more like Belle and Hannah looked more like Mulan. But you never try to break little kids' dreams; you leave that to reality and their parents.

After Meghan finished reading Beauty and the Beast, Hannah and Aidan were making a big fuss about being hungry and "needing" to eat. "We want food," Hannah announced. "And we really like sandwiches and hot chocolate."

"Do you want me to buy you sandwiches and hot chocolate?" Meghan asked her.

Her niece shrugged. "We are hungry and we do love you."

As if to emphasize what his older sister was saying, Aidan Walsh gave his aunt a hug. Meghan pulled him into her lap and leaned her head against his cheek. "Where do you poor, starving children want to eat lunch?"

"We not poor," Aidan exclaimed. "We just want to eat."

"Well, do you want to go and get sandwiches?" I asked them. "Or do you want to sit here and whine about it?"

"Let's go get lunch!" Hannah said, jumping up and down.

"Do we take them out for lunch or do we take them to the hotel restaurant?"

We were staying at the Hilton, so I figured the hotel restaurant would be a little fancier than the kids wanted. "There's a Panera about two blocks away. If you have a stroller for Eli, I can carry Aidan."

"If he'll let you," she said with a smile. "He's a very independent young man."

"I can handle him," I told her. "I promise."

The smile that crept onto her face was worth a million dollars to me.

* * *

I was determined to pay for the bill at Panera, or at least for my part of it. But Greg found a way to distract me and pay for the whole thing. And when I tried to pay him back, he refused. "Let me do this. You've had a stressful past few days. Just let me buy lunch for you and the kids. And stop stressing about it."

I was stressed. Jillian was going to be in the hospital for a while. And her father had flown over from England and announced that he wanted her to see a psychiatrist before being released from the hospital. Once released, he believed that she should be living with a family member who could be responsible for her and keep an eye on her. And I knew all too well that my dad and stepmother had me in mind for that job. They would offer me money and other rewards and remind me that I was living in their house rent-free. Before I knew it, I would be being bribed and manipulated to satisfy my family's whims and problems. In the Walsh family, I was disposable. I was simply there to help solve problems and to take care of things that no one else wanted to handle. I needed to get away from my family.

And that's why spending time with Greg and my niece and nephews was so wonderful. Little kids might be hard work at times but they love unconditionally. Greg and I were both showered with sloppy kisses as thanks for providing Hannah and Aidan with dinner. Meanwhile, Eli was sleeping in his stroller. Aidan was sitting on Greg's lap, offering him little opportunity to actually eat lunch. My nephew was eating but Greg wasn't so lucky. He'd eaten less than half of his sandwich because his arms were too full of Aidan. I knew how he felt. Hannah was leaning all over me and I wasn't getting too much food into my mouth. But I didn't care; I wasn't very hungry. I was worried about Jillian, stressed over the wedding, and afraid of what was going to happen next in my family. I felt like we were heading for an explosion. We had a major catastrophe coming for us because bad things always come in threes.

My niece and nephews adored Greg and they loved getting to spend the afternoon with him. He was good at Candyland and he apparently gave great piggy back rides. And he kept me entertained during nap time. We played cards in my hotel room while all three munchkins were sleeping. It was fun and comfortable to just sit there and talk to him. We didn't talk about anything serious other than the wedding. He didn't say anything about his relationship with Jillian and that was fine with me. I didn't want to know; I wanted to move on with my life. Mostly we focused on worrying about the wedding and taking care of Hannah, Aidan, and Elijah. Spending time with them, I realized that, at the age of twenty-seven, I wasn't getting any younger and I wanted to get married and start a family. I loved little kids and I had always wanted to be a mother. I'd let Greg slip through my fingers. If I found someone else, I wouldn't repeat that mistake again.

* * *

Two days later, my younger sister married one of the kindest, most honorable, noble men I'd ever met. And standing next to Bryan, as his best man, was another kind, honorable, noble man. They were from different political parties and had different beliefs about a lot of things in life. But they were friends. Then there was my father who believed that Republicans purely existed to annoy him and raise his blood pressure. Dad had high blood pressure but instead of doing something about it, he just blamed other people for his problems. He was blaming John McCain for his stress the week of the wedding. I was really confused by this since I doubt that McCain was even in Washington that week but Dad's not happy unless he's attacking people even if it's for no logical reason. Before the wedding, he was walking back and forth ranting about problems with the florist, the caterer, the priest, his tux, his hair, Ellen's hair, Ellen's dress, and a million other things. He was barking orders at everyone and acting like he was the king of the world, the king of the wedding. He was rude to Bryan's relatives, until someone told him who they all were. Well why else would a large group of people be so dressed up and in that part of the church at twelve-thirty in the afternoon? People don't generally wear black-tie apparel to take a tour of a church.

My sister was bridezilla but also full of nerves. "What if Bryan backs out?" she asked me as I helped her into her dress. "Does he think I'm a total bitch for wanting to get married even though Jillian's in the hospital? She's my stepsister, not my real sister. If it were you, I'd totally cancel my wedding. But then you'd never go and bungee-jump off a roof three days before my wedding. Meghan, I love you. You're so predictable and dependable. You're absolutely perfect. You're so damn predictable. You never make a dumb move or do anything that could screw up my life or Dad's career. I don't know what I'm going to do without you. You always fix everything. You're the best big sister ever."

I kissed her cheek and went back to lacing up her dress. "You're going to be a great wife for Bryan. And I'm sure he understands why you went ahead with the wedding."

"Meghan, we need to find you a man. You're so alone; it's just pathetic. You need a husband. I wonder if Bryan knows anyone. I should talk to him about it after the wedding."

I was really wishing that my sister would somehow forget all of this but I knew she wouldn't. She would definitely remember this and push forward with her plans to find me a husband. Ellen and my dad were also hot on the idea of finding me a husband. My grandmother Walsh asked me why I was still single. "You're so pretty," she told me. "Your younger sister is getting married. Why can't you find a nice boy to settle down with?"

I sighed. "I guess I just haven't met the right guy yet, Gran."

"But Meghan, you're twenty-seven. Your younger sister is getting married and both of your stepsisters have boyfriends. Just be honest with me, dear," she said, resting a hand on my wrist. "Are you a lesbian? It's all right if you were. You know that your father supports gay marriage. It'd be all right if you were a lesbian; we wouldn't mind."

I smiled and kissed my grandmother's cheek. "I'm sorry but I'm still straight. I just haven't met the right guy."

"Well, you're not getting any younger, so you better find someone soon."

After my grandmother left, Benjamin came up to me. "How's it going?"

"Ben, did you know that my biological clock is ticking, I'm getting old, and I need to find a husband soon or I'll die childless and alone."

"Have you been talking to Gran again?"

I smiled. "She asked me if I was a lesbian."

My younger brother hugged me. "Dad told me he and Ellen have a couple of guys they want to set you up with after the wedding."

"Yeah, Becky has similar plans, apparently."

"Oh, Meg, I just want you to be happy."

"I know," I told him, giving him a hug. "And I would like to get married and all that. But I hate being pushed around. I want to find my own boyfriend. I hate being set up! And I hate blind dates. Can't they trust me to find my own man?"

And then Greg walked behind Ben. My brother nodded at him. "Does that answer your question?"

I nodded and pursed my lips. "I hate being in this family sometimes."

He hugged me. "I'm so sorry, kiddo. You're my big sister and I love you. But I can't help you sometimes. I wish I could find you a guy or something but I'm leaving the country in a couple of weeks. And it's hard to set your sister up with your friends when you're in Afghanistan."

"Oh, don't worry. The whole time you're gone I'll be on my knees in front of the Blessed Sacrament wearing out my rosary beads."

He kissed my cheek. "Don't forget to ask St. Benjamin and St. Martin to pray for me."

"I will," I told him. "Now this wedding is in thirteen minutes, so you had better head back to the groom's room and I'll get back to the bride's room. And we can talk more later in the day."

"Give Becky a kiss for me. And remind her who pushed her out of the tree-house all those years ago."

"Of course," I replied. "But remember the record shows Connor to be the perpetrator still. And we can't reveal the truth."

* * *

Becky was a beautiful bride. My sister had always been absolutely gorgeous, much more beautiful than me. I had inherited my mother's dark brown hair and green eyes and olive coloring while Becky had blue eyes, light brown hair that was never out of place and a peaches and cream complexion. She looked like an angel in her white dress and the sparkling veil that was covering her face. Bryan's face was glowing; he looked like someone who was about to have his every wish, every dream granted to him. He just looked so proud, so happy. Greg's face was more complicated. He was smiling and his face looked like he was happy for Bryan but I knew his eyes and his eyes were the windows to his soul. Greg was not happy; he did not approve of Becky. He probably didn't think she was good enough for his best friend. That was probably true; I wasn't going to deny that my sister was planning to divorce Bryan when she got what she wanted out of him. And while Greg might not know that, he knew that there was something not right about my sister.

The happy couple exchanged vows and gleaming smiles. There were tears and dutiful mentions of "poor, dear Jillian. Our prayers and hopes are with her as she recovers from this tragic injury," as Becky put it. And by one-thirty, my little sister was married. She was the perfect, beaming bride. But I was the tired maid of honor who had spent the past six months planning someone else's wedding. But I would smile and give the perfect toast. I would dance and smile. I would tell funny jokes. I would stay sober all night. And then tomorrow afternoon, I would go back to Chicago and relax and let loose.

* * *

"Meghan, just don't get drunk." I overheard Becky talking to her older sister in the hallway outside the ballroom. "I need this wedding to be perfect."

"Rebecca Elizabeth Walsh-Hunter," Meghan sighed. "Do I look like the type of person who is going to get drunk at this wedding? I might be tired. I might be stressed. I am sick to death of people asking me why I'm still single when my dear, darling, precious baby sister is getting married. But I'm not going to get drunk tonight. I'll make the family proud. And then tomorrow night, when I'm back in Chicago, then I'll deal with my emotions."

"All right," Becky sighed.

I kept walking after that and I didn't hear anymore of the discussion. Why the hell was everyone so worried about Meghan being single when Becky was married now? My younger sisters had all gotten married before me? Were the rules different for girls than for guys? I guess they had to be. But were things that bad that Becky was worried about Meghan getting drunk? Was being single that hard? Okay, so I had overheard Senator Walsh's mother asking her older granddaughter if she was a lesbian before the wedding. I knew that Meghan wasn't a lesbian. Trust me; I've kissed the girl before. Wow, that sounds stupid. But just trust me; I dated Meg for a year and a half. When you date a girl for that long, you learn things about her. Meghan was pushed around and used by her family. Her family, especially her sister, used her. I knew that she'd done most of the planning for the wedding. Becky claimed she was too busy with things on Capitol Hill. Of course, her sister was busy with a job in Chicago; she didn't have time to run back and forth between Chicago and Washington D.C. at her sister's whims. But she did it. "Meghan should be canonized," Bryan had told me in September. "She does so much for her family. She's an absolute saint."

No, she's a martyr. Meghan should be canonized, but first someone had to rescue her from that family of hers. But I wasn't the one to do that. Her family hated me too much. Her white knight needed to be able to infiltrate the family. She needed someone who was more politically moderate than me. And she didn't want me anyway. The whole family was so screwed up it was beyond belief. You had to worry about a family like that. But I was glad she was standing up for herself and seeing a therapist. That was going to help this girl.

* * *

I danced with Meghan a few times. We didn't talk much but it was good to just dance with her. She also danced with her brothers, a few cousins, and most of the other guys in the wedding party. She was an amazing dancer; I'd known that for along time. She and Kevin really seemed to be hitting it off, which was good for him. He had been engaged to Alexis Samuels, Bryan's cousin, when she died in a car accident almost a year earlier. Kevin needed someone to cheer him up and bring new energy to his life. He had become really depressed since Alexis died. And Meghan seemed to make him laugh and smile. They had a lot in common; she could talk to him about being a teacher and literature. They both liked poetry, although not the same kinds of poetry. Kevin's taste was too morbid and depressing according to Meghan. But they had a good time talking and bickering. "They're cute together," Jenna Hunter remarked. "But I don't think they could ever work out together."

I looked at her. "What do you mean? They have some great chemistry."

"Meghan and Kevin?" she asked me. "Are you serious? They would kill each other; they argue so much."

"And it's cute."

"Greg, how would you like to spend the rest of your life arguing with someone over stupid things like poetry? They have similar interests but they don't actually agree on much within those interests. And it's not cute, playful bickering or bantering; it's actual tension, aggression. That is not cute or enjoyable. It's obnoxious."

I looked over at Meghan and Kevin who were no longer dancing but rather arguing loudly about Emily Dickinson. "She was an emotionally disturbed individual," Meghan was saying. "She wore white dresses all the time and lived in the attic."

"But she was a good poet," Kevin replied. "Have you read her poetry?"

"She didn't want those poems published."

"Who cares? They've been published and people can read them. So what if she didn't want us to read them? Her wishes weren't followed and now the poems are public property. She was a genius poet and that genius deserves to be shared with the world."

Jenna looked at me. "Would you really want them to spend the rest of their lives arguing about that? Earlier, they were arguing about whether or not Shakespeare was really Shakespeare. Now that's fun if you're just friends. But that's not cool if you're spending the rest of your life doing that with your spouse. English majors shouldn't marry other English majors."

* * *

Meghan didn't get drunk. She had one glass of champagne for the toasts and one glass of white zinfandel, which was her favorite wine. She danced and she played with her niece and nephews. Becky was pretty buzzed by the time she and Bryan finally left the ballroom. Bryan wasn't much of a drinker; in fact, we occasionally teased him, asking him if he secretly belonged to a religion that banned drinking. He always laughed us off but it was still fun to tease him. Meghan and I ended up heading back to the hotel together. Most of the rest of the wedding party had been drinking or had families and had left the reception before the end. But Meg and I stayed until the end and helped clean up the reception hall. By the time we left, she had discarded her shoes despite the cold temperatures. "My feet hurt so much from those blasted shoes," she told me. "It might be cold outside but that's by far less painful than these monstrosities that my darling little sister put me in."

"She didn't let you pick your own shoes?"

She laughed. "Greg, she's a control freak and it had to be the perfect wedding. This is the woman who tried to demote her own brother from groomsman to usher because she didn't want an uneven number of bridesmaids and groomsmen."

"Well, thankfully Bryan managed to convince her to at least demote someone else if she was going to demote someone."

"Being best man definitely saved your butt," she told me.

"Yeah, well, being maid of honor saved your own very lucky butt."

"I'm also the bride's sister and probably the closest friend she has. But I felt bad for Marshall. He had to buy the tux and everything. And then she downgrades him to just wearing a plain old suit as an usher." Meghan shook her head. "It wasn't fair to Marshall."

I smiled. That was Meghan; she was always worried about someone else. It was both a good and bad thing. She was rarely concerned about herself. She was almost never her own first priority. She'd spent the past several months planning her sister's wedding and putting her personal life on the back-burner. Even if I wasn't going to date her, I wanted her to find happiness in her personal life. I tried being bitter and spiteful and that did not work for either one of us. She didn't seem to react much to it and I just got hurt. I needed to be more sensible. I needed to make logical decisions. I still cared about Meghan but she wasn't ready to be in a relationship with me. She was still putting herself through hell. I needed her to grow up and spend a little time on herself. She needed to stop focusing on other people. But that trend had begun when her mother died. She had become a mother to Ben and Becky. Her life had become about her family and the other people around her.

* * *

I'd driven my car down to Washington, so I drove Meghan back to the hotel. It was close to two in the morning and the place was dead. "I was planning on going to an eight o'clock Mass and then going to the airport right after," Meghan said.

"What time is your flight leaving?" I asked.

She thought for a minute as I pushed the "up" button for the elevator. "Eleven o'clock," she replied.

"That sucks," I replied. "What if we go to that Mass together and I'll drive you to the airport afterwards? That way you won't have to worry about the taxi or anything. We can pack the car before Mass and then grab breakfast on our way to the airport. I'll drop you off there and then drive off to Connecticut. And don't protest; I'm going to do this for you. You've had a pretty rough week and I feel like someone has to do something for you."

She blushed. "You're my ex-boyfriend. You don't have to do this."

"Meghan," I said as we reached our floor. "I can afford to do this and I'm going to do it. I'm an unattached thirty-seven-year old man who is pretty well set financially and has only nieces and nephews on which to lavish his wealth. So I'll thank you to let me do something for someone over the age of twelve. Now I'll leave you at your room and I'll call you at seven-thirty to make sure you're ready for Mass. We're leaving at seven-forty."

"All right," she relented and unlocked her door. "Good-night, Greg. You've been an angel tonight."

I didn't get a chance to respond before she yawned and shut her door. For my part, I went back to my room and slept until my alarm went off at seven in the morning.

* * *

A/N: Please review. I'm leaving for school abroad tomorrow and I'm not sure when or how much I'll be updating over the next three and a half months. My internet connection is iffy and my life will probably be pretty busy. But enjoy this chapter and I'll get you more as soon as I can. And please do review!


	8. Chapter 8

A/N: I don't own _Persuasion_. I love my reviewers. Also, I won't be able to write the chapter in which Greg and Meghan get together, finally, until after the results of the U.S. Presidential election come out. I have two different ways it could all work out and I have to see what happens with U.S. politics. So this story won't be finished for quite a while. Also, I am in Spain studying right now and I only have internet access Monday-Thursday. I can write other times but I can't post things on weekends.

Quick Political Note: "RINO," a term which is used occasionally in this chapter means "Republican in Name Only" and it actually really was coined as a description for Senator John McCain. It means basically that the person claims to be a Republican but doesn't actually hold traditional Republican views. And "DINO" would be "Democrat in Name Only" but I don't know who would fit into that category, if anyone.

* * *

**Chapter Eight**

It was far harder than it should have been to let Meghan walk away from me at Dulles International Airport the day after her sister's wedding. I was going back to Connecticut in the hopes of talking to my sisters about my life before heading off to Iowa. Primary season was about to begin and I had to be there to see it through. And it was going to be an adventure. There were John Edwards and Dennis Kucinich, back for another try. There was John McCain, the old man, and Ron Paul, the wild card. The term "RINO" might have been invented for McCain but it defined Rudy Guiliani. Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton were both trying to make history. Mitt Romney wanted to be the first Mormon president. I didn't know what Fred Thompson was doing going from _Law and Order_ to running for President. Mike Huckabee looked good from one angle but not from others. Bill Richardson was a wild card for the Democrats. And the list went on. I knew that Senator Walsh had already endorsed Barak Obama; that was no surprise. They were both from Illinois and they were friends. I also knew that Walsh really didn't like Edwards or Richardson and that could be problematic if either of them were nominated. If it was Obama, Clinton, or Kucinich, the Democrats had nothing to fear from Senator Walsh. But anyone else and his storied Irish temper could be an issue.

I had a long drive back to Connecticut in front of me. And I only had music to keep me company. On the drive from the hotel to the church and from the church to the restaurant and then to the airport, Meghan and I had been listening to her favorite band, Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers. And I was the one who had introduced her to the Sixers, back when we were dating. And she still listened to them and loved them. She'd gotten their 2007 album, _Glassjaw Boxer_, on her own and we'd been listening to my copy of it. It was something that we could both agree upon. And when it came to music, there wasn't much that we both liked. I was into the Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, and Queen-type music as well as modern alternative rock, a little acoustic rock, and classical guitar. I also liked some classical music, which was more hit and miss. Meghan really liked a huge range of stuff from classical music and classical guitar to Latin pop music and alternative rock to acoustic rock and soundtracks to movies and musicals. She was a lot more "liberal" in her music taste than me. But that was to be expected; I was raised on Queen and Pink Floyd while she grew up with Connor, who would listen to anything at least once.

I found myself listening to a lot of Queen while driving. Meghan loved Queen, especially the song "Tie Your Mother Down." One of her favorite things about the band, though, was the fact that two of their albums were named after Marx Brothers movies. And then I found a CD that she'd made me while we were dating that had songs she was sure I would love. It was mostly stuff I never would have picked on my own and she actually did really well picked stuff out for me. She introduced me to the wonders of Phil Keaggy's guitar playing, which she always reminded me that he did with "nine fingers, just like Frodo." She was a big nut about _The Lord of the Rings_, but I'd read the books almost as many times as she had and I was pretty sure that Frodo never played the guitar. That was also the CD that she used to introduce me to Rodrigo y Gabriela, a Mexican guitar-playing duo that she absolutely loved and swore that I'd feel the exact same way. I had to admit that they were pretty amazing. I also wasn't sure how I'd never known about them before. It was all peaceful, soothing music and good for thinking or long drives. I was doing a lot of thinking on a long drive. I was pretty sure that at least one of my sisters was going to call me a moron when I got to my parents' house and talked to them. Most of my sisters were big fans of Meghan and thought I should have worked harder than just "one stupid column that she might not have even read," to quote Karen. "You have to talk to her, you idiot," Liz told me. "I should just smack you upside the head for letting her go."

I have very loving sisters. Michelle had always been open about how much of an idiot she thought I was. And Julie just shot me glares and named her baby daughter Meghan. Yeah, I got the message, little sister; I pissed you off. Little Meghan Elinor Fenton is the cutest goddaughter ever; of course, Meghan is my only goddaughter. The rest of my sisters have named me godfather to each of their first-born sons.

* * *

"You do know that you're completely fucked up, don't you?" Liz asked me the next evening as I sat at my parents' dinner table with my four sisters.

I looked at my thirty-year-old sister. "You're lucky Mom and Dad took all their grandchildren out for the evening."

"Yeah, so we siblings could have a meeting about how fucked up our darling Gregory is," she replied. San Francisco must be a bad influence on her; she never used to swear before she moved there. "You seriously got your ex-girlfriend's younger sister to fall in love with you and then she jumped off a roof."

"It's Meghan's stepsister," I said through gritted teeth. "And she was trying to bungee-jump."

"So you got some moron to fall in love with you," Karen said. "Don't make faces at me, Gregory. I'm trying to make sure I have the details right. So did you meet Jillian randomly or through Meghan?"

"He met her when he was visiting me when I was pregnant with Olivia," Michelle said.

"I actually met her first at Bryan and Becky Hunter's engagement party," I admitted. "But it was briefly and not really important."

"Nope, all details are essential and important," Karen said. "We're analyzing you now."

"Everything goes on the table," Julie, the psychologist of the family, announced. "We want dates, times, details, and explanations."

"What is wrong with you?" Michelle asked me.

"She dumped me!"

"After her family played mind games with her," Liz replied. "That doesn't count. To get Meghan back, you have to fight through all the crap her family tells her. You have to prove to her that you're telling the truth and they're liars."

"And you have to prove that you are worthy of her," Karen added.

"I never acted like I wasn't worthy of her," I replied.

Julie snorted. "What is her stepsister's name again?"

I sighed. "Point taken, I have been an asshole."

"And if you want to win her back, you're going to have to work your ass off to get her," Michelle told me.

"And primary season is starting, so I can't do anything because I'm too busy travelling for work."

My sisters all managed to sigh collectively. I think they practiced that move. Like I think while I was at the wedding, they had meetings where they discussed ways to annoy me. "So take some time to think about it while you're working," Liz suggested. "And then once you're not so busy you can go visit Michelle and work on patching things up."

"What if she meets someone else before then?"

"I can call you and tell you," Michelle said. "And you will have to come to Illinois for our primary in February or March. You can stay with me and I could have her over for dinner while you're in town."

But the idea that my Meghan could love someone else was still bothering me. I was really afraid that I was going to lose her to my own selfish pride. I knew my sisters understood the female brain better than me. I had to trust them about this. But I was also nervous and worried. I had to work. I had to write my column; there was no question about that. But I wanted to get my girl back.

* * *

I went back to Chicago. Life kept going. Work was busy but the smiles on my students' faces made everything worthwhile. I had some great friends and fantastic neighbors. And Jillian didn't come live with me. Instead, Kevin Wong took her to England to live with her dad. Jude and Iris Walker-Gilbert, Jillian's dad and stepmother, had come to the United States after her accident and decided that what she really needed was some relaxation and therapy. And then Kevin Wong found a job in Hampshire, near Jude and Iris's house. So he took her to England with her family. And he ended up living with Jude and Iris as well because they wanted to help the guy who had helped their daughter so much. Kevin and Jillian was a coupling that surprised me, especially when I thought she'd been pretty serious with Greg and I thought he was still really desolate from losing Alexis. But I guess I'd been wrong about those things. I heard a little bit here and there from Michelle about Greg. He was really busy travelling around. The column was always well-written, but people who knew him well could tell that all the travel was wearing him out. "He needs a vacation," Michelle told me one day in early February when we were having coffee together. "Every time I talk to him he's just worn out and exhausted. Half the time I don't think he knows where he is or whose campaign he's following."

"Who is he with right now?"

"Mitt Romney," she replied. "He really like Romney, says he's a great guy and really personable."

"Does he like his policies and stuff like that?"

She shrugged. "Read his column. He's a lot more open about stuff like that with his readers than with me. I think he doesn't feel comfortable talking about it on the phone or when he thinks my kids might be around."

"That's Greg for you," I said. "He's a lot more comfortable talking about politics in print than he is when he's talking."

"He's like that with all important things. He gets frustrated easily when he's talking so email is easier for him."

"I remember. His emails are so entertaining though. It's when he finally gets what he wants to say out there and he's honest with you."

His sister nodded. "Greg always was a better writer than talker. He gets to think about what he's saying more when he's writing. He doesn't do spontaneous well."

"I noticed that when we were dating," I told her. "He liked to plan things out and think about them before he actually did anything."

"He's very practical, very methodical."

"And that's probably why things didn't work out between the two of us. He thinks out everything and I just needed someone who was more impulsive and willing to work with me. I'm from a screwed-up family; I need someone who can fight that."

Michelle smiled and squeezed my hand. "You'll find someone. I promise."

"My family is trying to set me up with Marshall Bartholomew."

"I wouldn't think he's really your type," she said, making a face.

I shrugged. "He's really nice."

"And he's one of the nation's most eligible bachelors, according to _Forbes_," Michelle teased. "He's loaded, gorgeous, and brilliant. What more could a girl want?"

I smiled at her. "Marshall is fun to hang out with. He takes me to nice restaurant and buys me beautiful flowers. I'm not sure I'd want to get serious with him. But he's fun. He takes me to plays and movies. And he buys me books."

"And he's gorgeous," she said. "His family owns half of the state of Ohio as well as three multimedia companies. He has a house in Columbus, an apartment in Chicago, another in New York, and a place in Paris."

"Okay, so that's all wonderful," I admitted. "But you want to know the truth? Aside from your brother, if I were to date any of the guys who were in the wedding, it would definitely be Jon."

"Representative Jonathan Peters of Wyoming?" she queried. "He's cute."

"And he's a moderate Democrat and he's really nice."

"I like having single friends," Michelle teased. "This is fun. Tell me more. Why would you rather date Jon than Marshall?"

"Jon is more real," I said. I pulled my leg up into my lap and rested my chin on it. "I'm not sure why but he seems more real, more honest. I'm more comfortable with him than I am with Marshall. With Marshall, it always seems like there's a wall. You can go so far with him but no farther. You can't get as close to him as I'd like to be with my boyfriend."

She nodded and took a long sip of her coffee. "Have you talked to him about it?"

I shook my head. "I'm not sure why but it's kind of hard to talk to him sometimes. And I'd like a guy's advice about it, but I'm not comfortable talking to Connor about it. I know he doesn't really like Marshall and I'm pretty sure he'd just tell me to ditch Marshall. And Bryan and Marshall are so close that I feel like they're a little blind to each other's faults. Bryan just likes to see the good in everyone. And Ben is in Afghanistan, so I can't talk to him."

"You want to talk to Greg."

"Is that sick or what? I want to talk to my ex-boyfriend about problems I'm having with my current one."

Michelle smiled. "You and Greg were really close for a long time and now there's nothing between you. It's got to be rough for you. No one would expect it to be easy."

"But we broke up ages ago. I shouldn't still be hung up on him."

"Honey, I don't think you're still hung up on him. I think you just still care about him. He was a good friend to you during your sister's wedding. And you were a good friend to him after Jillian jumped off the roof. You two have a complicated relationship."

"I don't want complicated. I want a wedding ring, a comfortable house, a picket fence, a dog, and at least two point five children."

She laughed. "I hope you get what you're looking for even if it's not with my brother. But I'll admit that I'd love to have you as a sister-in-law."

"And I'd love to be related to you. But I doubt that will ever happen."

* * *

In May, Bryan called me to tell me that Becky was three months pregnant. "We weren't really planning on this but we're thrilled nonetheless," he told me. "She's due in November, right around the election. That's going to be tricky for family and everything. But we're really excited about the baby."

And then he dropped a bombshell on me. "Meghan and Marshall are getting really serious."

"What?" I screamed. "When did that happen?"

"They've been dating since January. And let me rephrase that. He's serious about her. She's not very serious about him. She thinks there's something weird about him. But he's really into her."

"I can't see them together," I said. "He's just so cocky and arrogant and she's so calm and peaceful."

"Greg, that's what everyone including my wife and your sister have said."

"Well it's true," I protested. "They're just not a good match. He's a rich bad boy and she's a good-girl princess."

"Marshall is one of my closest friends and I trust him deeply."

"That may well be but I don't like him being with Meghan."

"Dude, you guys broke up about two and a half years ago. You've got to let her go."

I took a deep breath. "I want her back. I was an idiot to let her go. I was an idiot to mess around with Jillian. And I know all of that now. She's the most beautiful woman I've ever known and I'm worthless without her. I've got to get her back. I can't live without. I can't be the best possible version of myself without her."

"But she's dating Marshall."

"And that is, in my opinion, unfortunate."

Bryan sighed. "Greg, you can't steal someone else's girl. It's just not acceptable, especially in this situation. Marshall is my friend and I won't let you do that."

"And Meghan is your sister-in-law. Don't you have a right to protect her from getting hurt?"

"No, that's what Connor and Benjamin are for. I only protect my own sisters."

"Ben is in Afghanistan. He can't protect her and I'm not allowed to intervene in my ex-girlfriend's affairs."

"So trust Connor."

I was getting frustrated. "Bryan, Connor lives in New York City."

"And I live in Washington D.C. and I'm not getting involved in Becky's sister's relationship with my friend. I'm going to trust the two of them."

"Well, I'm not going to trust him. And I know her too well to leave her alone. She thinks she isn't as important as Ben and Connor and Becky and Tasha and Jill. She'll let herself get less than she deserves just because she's settling for less. She settles and I hate that. She's settling here and I'm not going to let her settle anymore. I'd rather see her be happy with someone else than see her settle to be with me."

"She's not with you."

"I know that. But she's not happy with Marshall. I may not have seen the two of them together but I'm not stupid. I know my Meghan. She wants to get married and have a family. She hears her biological clock ticking and she wants to be a mommy. She can't find someone who is worthy of her to be daddy for her, so she's settling. She isn't falling for Marshall. She's falling for his bank account and the possibilities of what he can give her."

"I disagree with you."

"We're lawyers, Bryan. We're allowed to disagree. But congratulations on the baby and I hope Becky feels better soon."

"I'll talk to you soon, Greg."

* * *

"Michelle, you never told me that Meghan was dating Marshall Bartholomew." I had called my sister immediately after getting off the phone with Bryan.

"You never asked me if she was seeing anyone," she replied snappily. "She's not your personal property and you just might have to let her go."

"They've been together for four months. They're not engaged or married yet."

"My God, you are selfish. You really think that you can get her back."

"And you don't think I deserve her. But you know what, Michelle? I probably don't but I love her and I'm willing to work for her and fight for her. I'm willing to become a man who is worthy of her. That's what I've been trying to do these past few months."

"How is that coming?" she asked.

"Oh, you know. I'm an asshole, a jerk, and a worse than senseless thing. But I've also realized that I can prove myself worthy of her. I can't buy her love. But I can show her my love and more importantly, I can show her how much she means to me and how much she matters to the world around her."

"She's getting a lot better about that," my sister admitted. "And you didn't hear it from me. But she's not as serious about Marshall as everyone thinks. If you want her back, get your butt to Chicago and fight for her."

"I can't come until July."

"I'll try to keep her safe for you until then. But I can't make you any promises, Greg."

"I understand," I told her. And I did; my sister was just Meghan's friend. She didn't make decisions for her or tell her what to do. She could give her advice but she couldn't force her to do anything. But that was what a good friend did. And that was what I wanted to do for Meghan. I would like to be in a relationship with her but if that wouldn't work, I'd at least like to be her friend. Friendship was better than nothing. I was going to be in Chicago in July and I was going to make an effort to make everything up to Meghan. I was going to prove to her that she was worthwhile.

* * *

The middle of June brought the blessed end of the school year. And the Democrats finally decided on one candidate for the presidency. It also brought my dad, Ellen, and Tasha back to Chicago. Ben was still in Afghanistan and Connor almost never came to Chicago except for Christmas, weddings, and funerals. The house was filled with mayhem. Becky and Bryan were in Columbus but even they came into town for a week. My normally quiet, peaceful house was now overflowing with people and noise. Tasha brought her boyfriend. My dad brought his political opinions. Ellen brought her plans for her next book. Becky had her pregnancy and her plans for her baby. Bryan had his plans for the rest of his political term and his next campaign. And I had my pile of books I wanted to read over the summer. So I spent a lot of time at Michelle's house reading books and playing with her delightful children. I got a lot more attention and love there than I would have gotten by staying at the Walsh Mansion.

My sister was thrilled about her baby. A year earlier, she'd terminated her pregnancy when the father wasn't the man she wanted. Now, she was pregnant with the child of a man she claimed to adore. "Bryan and I are so happy," she told me. "This is just perfect for both of us. We love each other and now we're having a baby. It's going to be great for him next year when he's campaigning with an adorable little baby. It's going to be great."

"Are you going to be able to work for CNN this election season?" I asked, knowing that this had been her dream.

"I'm going to be blogging for them instead. It doesn't pay as well but it'll be interesting to get the views of the wife of a young, African-American congressman during this election."

I could see that point really well. Barak Obama and Bryan Hunter, after all, were not so different. They had been raised in very different circumstances, but in their adulthoods, they had travelled similar paths. Obama had gone into the Senate while Bryan was in the House of Representatives, but that was personal choice. The age gap between the two was only about ten years. And who knew what Bryan would be doing in ten years? Maybe he would be in the Senate or running for president.

"I'm really looking forward to this baby," Becky told me.

"Do you know if you're having a boy or a girl yet?" I asked.

She shook her head. "We're going to find that out on our next appointment. I'm really looking forward to finding out. Bryan says he'll take either, but I really want to know. There are clothes to buy and a room to decorate. And we have to pick a name."

"Do you have any ideas yet?"

Becky smiled. "No, not really, but I'm thinking about a couple things. But I don't want to really start thinking about it until we know the gender."

"That makes sense. But Hunter is a good last name; you can put almost anything with it."

"I know and that's the best thing. I could do almost anything I wanted. So are you and Marshall going to get married or break up?"

I looked at her. "What did you just ask me?"

"I don't like you guys together. Bryan does; I don't. So I want to know what's going on with your relationship. Are you going to marry him or kick him to the side of the road?"

"Marshall is a great guy."

"And you don't see him that much; and he gives you great stuff. That'd be great if you were shallow like Jillian but you're not. You're too smart to date a guy just for stuff. You deserve the great intellectual guy who gives you time and effort, not just fancy clichés wrapped up in expensive paper."

I didn't know what to say to that. That wasn't something I ever would have expected to hear something like that from Becky.

* * *

A/N: Please review! I really hope you like it.


	9. Chapter 9

A/N: This is more or less the end of the story. I've never owned _Persuasion_. But I hope you enjoy this. I'm throwing everything together and ending it like this. I had once planned to something far more drawn out and similar to _Persuasion_ or at least _Much More than a Fairy Tale_ since this story was based on and drawn from my older story, _Much More than a Fairy Tale _but unfortunately I'm a college student and I'm living in Spain for the semester and I don't have as much time as I might like. Also, my hard drive crashed about two months ago and I lost all my notes and plans for this story. So I'm just wrapping everything up now. I don't think there was ever that much interest in this story. And I know that the political opinions expressed in this story drove many readers away. But I have always felt very passionately about this story and I really like it. _Persuasion_ is probably my favorite Austen novel and I really love retelling the story in a modern context. And I hope that you can enjoy this last chapter. I also don't own the sonnet that I used to open the chapter.

* * *

_Let me not to the marriage of true minds _

_Admit impediments. Love is not love _

_Which alters when it alteration finds, _

_Or bends with the remover to remove: _

_O no! It is an ever-fixed mark _

_That looks on tempests and is never shaken; _

_It is the star to every wandering bark, _

_Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. _

_Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks _

_Within his bending sickle's compass come: _

_Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, _

_But bears it out even to the edge of doom. _

_If this be error and upon me proved, _

_I never writ, nor no man ever loved._

-Sonnet 116, William Shakespeare

* * *

While my dad and his cronies were going crazy over Obama's win at my house, I just wanted to go someplace and get some sleep. I knew that wouldn't be possible at home. The alcohol was now free-flowing in typical Walsh family style. So I called Michelle Murray and asked if I could borrow her couch for the night. "My dad is having a party at our house but I still have to work tomorrow morning. Do you mind if I spend the night at your place?"

"Sure," she said. "I'll get the couch ready for you. Just to warn you, Dave isn't home. But why aren't they all going down to Grant Park?"

"Michelle, it's my dad; I never really know. I just know that they wanted to stay here and stay warm and keep me awake all night."

"Did Bryan win his election?"

"Yes, Rebecca called about half an hour ago to let us know. They're both thrilled. So my dad is celebrating that too. And all the celebrating is being done in grand, glorious Irish style."

"Well, come over whenever you're ready. You can have the couch for as long as you need it."

"I just want to call Connor quickly and then I'll be over."

"We'll see you soon."

* * *

Connor completely understood how I felt. "Dad isn't in Grant Park because he knows and we both know how he parties when something like this happens," he said. "When Clinton won in 1996, Dad got drunk out of his mind. And we both know that Dad is a sloppy drunk."

"He wasn't like that before Mom died."

"Well, his North Star fell from the sky and he got lost. He was a different person when she was alive. But he lost the person who kept him on the straight and narrow and he got lost. In all honesty, he's a very confused man. But he's my dad and I love him for some reason."

"We love him because he's our father and we know what he can be."

"Maybe someday he'll be that person again."

I smiled. "I doubt it."

"We can hope and pray." Connor really is an eternal optimist. He really is a person who believes that love hopes all things and endures all things. In that, he is the most like our mom out of all four kids. My mom was eternally optimistic and she really kept all of us going, especially Dad. I really think we all believed she could kick cancer's butt because of her optimism. But she's gone. When she died, it was like a horrible practical joke without a punch line.

"So I hear you finally kicked Marshall to the curb for good."

"That's been over for months now; he just didn't understand that. But the Beatles were right; money can't buy me love," I told him. "He wasn't real; he was just acting. I had fun with him but he wasn't real."

"And he isn't Greg."

"That's over. I'm just going to have to get over Greg."

"Or be single for the rest of your life. It would be horribly romantic of you. Think about it. You lost your one true love because of your family and so you spend the rest of your life as this devoted teacher who pours her life into her work and changes the world. One of your former students becomes the president of the United States and another becomes the Pope and another becomes the next Mother Teresa and they all claim you, the sainted Miss Meghan Walsh of St. Mary's Elementary School in Chicago, as their inspiration. The world becomes fascinated by you and you win the Noble Peace Prize. And then when you die, the world discovers that your inspiration and your driving force was your strange and bittersweet romance with Gregory Fenton. Someone will write a book about your tragic love story. And then they will make a movie about the two of you. It will be beautiful and oh so romantic. It will win Oscars and women will cry buckets filled with tears over it. It will be compared to Nicholas Sparks's novels but it will be better because it will be a true story. Doesn't that sound amazing?"

"It sounds like you need to either go to bed or become a novelist."

"It will be the love story that moves a generation," my older brother insisted.

"You're a horrible person and I'm ending this conversation right now," I replied.

"Meghan, you're boring."

"I screwed things up with Greg."

Connor sighed. "And he was an asshole about the whole thing. He should have fought harder for you. He wrote one stupid column and then let things go. If he wanted you so badly, he wasn't very willing to work for you. I'm not going to let some wimp marry my favorite sister."

"And I shouldn't have bent to family pressure. Everyone knows that Ellen and Dad told me lies to make me end things with Gregory. We both made mistakes. And now we'll both live with them for the rest of our lives."

"You're so melodramatic. You definitely got that from Dad."

"Connor, you're as charming as a dead octopus."

"Now, now, let's not call each other names. Why don't you just go spend the night at your ex-boyfriend's sister's house and we can mope more about the political state of our nation at a later date?"

"I was thinking more that we could pray for the conversion of our nation's leaders starting in our own house."

"The Catholic schoolteacher strikes again."

I sighed. "I have no clue what that means."

"Honestly, I don't either but it sounds good."

"Good-night, Connor," I said.

"Nighty-night, Meggsie-Christine," he replied. "I love you and your melodramatic nature."

I laughed as my dad walked into the foyer; I was sitting on the stairs in the foyer with my coat, my purse, and a duffel bag. "I love you too, Connie. Give my love to the wife and kids. I'll see you guys at Thanksgiving."

"Is that your brother?" my dad asked before taking a sip of the beer in his hand.

I nodded. "I called him to let him know that Bryan won his election and to see how Jessica and the kids are doing."

"How many kids does he have now?"

"Three," I replied. "Hannah is five, Aidan is three, and Elijah is a little over a year old."

"I have three grandchildren," he told me. "And Becky is about to give me another one. When are you going to get married?"

"When I find the right guy," I replied.

"What was wrong with Marshall? I loved him. He was so handsome and rich and enthusiastic. You two would have had beautiful children together."

I shrugged; Marshall had been kissing my dad's ass constantly while treating me like a princess but ignoring my true needs and wants. "He just wasn't right for me."

"You could end up old and alone."

"But if I'm happy without a man, then why bother with one? After all, a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle."

"I just don't want you to be lonely, Meggsie." My dad was a sloppy, sentimental drunk.

I smiled and patted his hand before putting on my coat. "I am happy, Daddy," I told him. "I love my job and I have lots of friends. I am happy. Go celebrate Obama. It's the first Black president; think about how hard you've worked for that."

He smiled at me and kissed my cheek. "You're witnessing history. Even a conservative like you should be able to understand that."

"I do," I told him. "Daddy, I'm very proud of my nation for electing a Black man to be our president. I just worry about his politics. You know me; I'm very pro-life."

"You're a papist like your mother. You put the Church above all else."

"It happens."

"It's not a bad thing," he told me. "It's just very different especially in this country. Your mother was like that. You're a lot like her. Meggsie, I think you were Maureen's favorite; you and Connor, she loved you two the most. And you two are just like her. And then you made Benjamin like you. But I've got Becky; she thinks like I do. I think differently than Maureen did. I'm an American before I'm a Catholic. I'm a Catholic American."

"And I'm an American Roman Catholic; American just tells you where the Roman Catholic is from. The Church will always be first for me."

"It's that damn Gregory Fenton's fault."

I shrugged, wondering why Greg kept coming up tonight. "I think Greg had something to do with it. But it's also Connor's fault."

"Damn Connor," he said. "I screwed up with him. I just pushed your brother away because he was different and I couldn't understand him. You and Benjamin disagree with me but you still love me. Why doesn't Connor love me anymore?"

"You need to lay off the beer," I told him, patting his shoulder with a smile. "But I'll see you later. I need to get going. But remember this, Dad. Connor does love you; you just need to try being nicer to him. But I really do need to get going."

"Where are you going?"

"I'm spending the night at Michelle's. I have to get up earlier for work tomorrow and it's just easier to spend the night there. It's quieter there and I can get more sleep."

"You have to work tomorrow? I don't." He also gets really stupid when he's drunk.

I patted his shoulder again and smiled. "I know, Daddy. But no matter who wins the election, I still have to work. So I'll see you later."

"I love you, Meggsie. I'm a bad parent but I love you."

"I love you too, Dad," I told him, kissing his cheek. And then I left his house.

* * *

I drove over to the Murrays' house so I could just leave for work from there the next morning. And then I walked to the front door and rang the bell. "Hey, come on in," my favorite ex-boyfriend said when he opened the door. "Michelle said you would be coming over."

"Gregory, what are you doing here?" I asked as I stepped inside the house and he shut the door behind me. "I would have thought you would be in Arizona at McCain's headquarters."

"I voted in Connecticut this morning," he said leading me into the living room. "And now I'm spending a couple of weeks here. Michelle is pregnant, again, and Dave is doing this weird thing where he's going to be at the Mayo Clinic as a guest surgeon for a like a month or two. So I arrive in Chicago with my portable job to play surrogate Daddy indefinitely."

I smiled as I put down my duffle bag and purse and made myself at home on the couch. "I haven't seen you much recently."

"The election kept me pretty busy," he replied. "But I saw you at the fourth of July, Labor Day, and Katie's birthday party. And we talked for over an hour at each of those events as well as scattered conversations in the backyard whenever we ran into each other during my scattered visits to my sister's house."

"And Labor Day and Katie's birthday party were the same weekend and over two months ago. I'm not sure I know anything about what you've been up to in the past two months besides what I read in your column."

"You still read my column? But we broke up almost three years ago."

"But I still agree with your politics and your morality. I started reading your column before I met you. And, in case you're wondering, not only did I vote for McCain this morning but I told my dad that to his face when I got home from work this afternoon. I didn't even bother to wait for the family email or anything."

Greg stood in the doorway to the living room staring at me. "You do realize that I was an idiot not to chase after you when you ran off on me all those years ago, don't you? I should have chased you down and told you that your family was full of liars and idiots and that you deserved more. Instead, I was insensitive and immature. And I acted like it was your fault. I threw myself at your stepsister. But I didn't want her. I just wanted to prove to you that I wasn't interested in you anymore, that I wasn't in love with you anymore. I wanted you to know how much you'd hurt me. I wanted to hurt you like I'd hurt you. But last winter, during your sister's wedding, I realized something. I kept hurting myself. And you were getting hurt on all sides, including by me. I had once claimed to love you. I had once promised to protect you. But at that wedding, I saw how your family treated you. I saw the way Tasha and Jill abuse you. I saw the way your dad and Ellen talk to you. Your brothers respect you and adore you, but they're the only ones. And that was when I realized that you hadn't broken up with me because you wanted to do it. You did it because you were told to do it, tricked into doing it. Your brothers told me about how you were in therapy to help you learn to move past the way your family treats you and to become a stronger woman. And then this past summer, I saw your family pushing Marshall at you."

And then I laughed. "And you thought that I'd go over to him and marry him."

"Well, you looked pretty serious about him at the Fourth of July."

"He was pretty serious about me. I was never serious about him. Greg, the day that I told him I was a conservative, he donated a quarter of a million to Obama's campaign just to mock me. He doesn't necessarily agree with Obama; he says he really likes the ideals of communism despite the fact that his fortune comes from a capitalistic empire. But he could throw around that kind of money just to tease me about my opinions and beliefs. That scared me. So I headed for the hills and told him to go screw himself. My dad was broken-hearted. But I felt free. That was when I realized that I don't need a man to make me happy. I need a man about as much as a fish needs a bicycle."

His face fell as I said that. "So you're just swearing off men?"

I laughed. "I thought about it. But I really do want to get married and have a family."

Greg sat down on the couch opposite mine. "So you don't need a man?"

"But I want one."

He smiled. "So you got rid of Marshall, a man who could have offered you a lifetime of comfort and happiness."

"He, like my dad, thought that being a teacher was just a stopping point on the path to a better career. They couldn't understand that this is what I want to do; it's all I've ever wanted to do."

"But you're so good at it," Greg said. "You're a great teacher and you love it. It makes you so happy. I know how happy it makes you; I've seen your smiles on the end of your good days at work, when you've taught someone something. I really think that it's your vocation. I think you were born to be a teacher."

I smiled at him. "I'm glad someone thinks that. That's how I feel and I'm sick of people telling me that I'm wrong about everything."

"I take it politics was a typical dinner table discussion at the Walsh house."

I laughed. "My dad has spent the past month trying to change my mind and sway my vote to his side of the table. But it turns out he didn't need to change my mind. The Democrats won without my vote. They don't need me. So I'll stay faithful to the Magisterium and trust God and pray for our nation."

"Did you read the column that I'm publishing tomorrow?"

"Yes, I hacked your computer."

He smiled that legendary smile that had basically started all of this; I fell for his smile long before I ever met him. "I'm publishing this column that is specifically addressed to my Catholic readers asking them to do what you just said. Stay faithful to the Magisterium; listen to the teachings of the Church. Trust God and His will for our nation. And pray for our nation and her leaders. I'm also publishing one addressed to all of my readers, regardless of credo or color, asking them to accept the new president even if they don't agree with him. I'm going to remind them that we are still a democracy and that we must continue to fight for our democratic rights. We need to continue to vote according to our conscience, wherever that leads us."

"I think that's a good idea. I think we need to remember that and not try to run off to more conservative countries and hide out there until 2012."

"I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to keep blogging and writing my column and speaking out for the rights of the unborn. I think I'm going to throw myself more into the pro-life movement right now."

I nodded. "That's how I feel."

He looked at me. "Meghan, you know that I'm really sorry about the way I've treated you in the past few years. I've been an utter asshole to you."

"But I've been no saint either. I just took off when my family attacked us."

"Meghan, let me talk," he said. "I should have been patient and caring with you when instead I was judgmental and harsh. I hurt you more when I should have been trying to help you and show you how amazing I thought you were. I added to your problems when I should have been trying to ease your burden. But I tried to push you from my mind and my heart. I cared for you but I tried to make myself stop loving you. But I couldn't stop loving you. No matter how much I tried to make myself fall in love with Jill, it could not happen. I have loved none but you. Maybe I've been unfair or unjust. I have been weak and resentful and hurtful; I know that. But I've never stopped loving you. I realized that at the wedding last winter. You're the reason I keep coming back to Chicago."

My breath hitched and I just sat there, staring at him. My ex-boyfriend was sitting there telling me that he loved me and wanted to be with me. And all I could do was sit there and stare at him.

And then he continued. "Whenever I think about my future, you're always right beside me. I want you. I need you. I can't keep living without you. Meghan, I love you and I want you back. Say something, anything, please!"

Tears were pouring down my cheeks as I listened to his last few sentences and all I could do was nod like an utter fool. "Yes," I whispered.

As soon as the words were out of my lips, he was flying across the room and taking me in his arms. He was kissing my cheeks, my nose, my eyes, my lips, and my neck and I was kissing him back and clinging to him as I cried. "I love you, Gregory," I whispered in his ear.

He pulled away from me at that and smiled. "I've waited for months to hear that from your lips."

"You can hear it as often as you want now," I replied. "I'm not changing my mind about you ever again. You've got me for good now, Greg."

He kissed my forehead again as we heard footsteps on the stairs. Michelle was standing in the entrance to the room wearing her glasses and a bathrobe over her pajamas. "What is going on down here?" she asked with a hand resting on her seven months pregnant belly.

"We were working out a few things," Greg told her.

She looked at us. "You've been kissing. You two were definitely kissing each other."

"I told you. We were working something out."

"Are you finally going to marry her?"

I looked at Greg and he looked at me. "I was planning to ask her to marry me about three years ago but that never happened."

"So ask her now, you fool."

Greg blushed and I smiled. "Michelle, it doesn't just work like that. We broke up almost three years ago and we just got back together five minutes ago. We can't just get engaged. That's not how these things work."

"Oh grow up. We all know that you two were destined for each other. You both know what you want out of life. You want the same things and you know that you love each other. And neither one of you is getting any younger. So just get engaged. I know you still have that ring. Heck, it's probably upstairs in your suitcase right now. So say the magic happy words. Get engaged. Get married next summer. Have many, many babies. And live happily ever after."

I laughed and leaned my head against his chest. And then he kissed the top of my head. "Well," he said. "Should we just get engaged or should we date for a while before we do that?"

"Greg, we're going to end up engaged no matter what, aren't we?"

He nodded. "I would assume so."

"Let's just go for it then."

He smiled. "Then I need to get something from my room." And then he ran upstairs.

"Are you just going to stand there and watch?" I asked Michelle.

"I'm seven months pregnant," she said. "And I am both his sister and your next-door neighbor. I've watched this relationship grow and evolve over the past four years. I'm your biggest fan. I get to watch you two get engaged."

I smiled and leaned back against the couch. "Michelle, have you been trying to work the two of us back together?"

"Since January," she replied simply. "In January, he came to his four sisters and told us about what happened at the wedding. We told him he had to leave you alone until the primaries were over because he'd be so busy and because of Jill. Liz gave him a good raking down and cussed him out beautifully. But then he had our permission to chase after you. I wanted to see you happy. I knew that Marshall wasn't for you and I knew that if you could work through your family, Greg was the guy for you."

"What are you two talking about?" Greg asked as he came back downstairs with a small velvet box in his hand.

"I'm explaining why I get to watch you two get engaged," his sister replied.

He sighed. "I'm not arguing with you. It's after midnight and I'm tired. I just want to get engaged and get some sleep."

"And I have to go to work tomorrow morning," I said. "So let's just get this over with."

"This is not going to be romantic, is it?" she asked.

Gregory got down on one knee in front of me and smiled. "Meghan, I've loved you for a long time. I know we've had a very rough and long road to this moment. But I love you and I can't live without you anymore. I want you. I want to have a family with you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. But first I need to marry you. So will you, Meghan Christine Walsh, marry me?"

I smiled and pressed my forehead against his. "Yes, Gregory, I will marry you."

He smiled and slid a ring onto my left ring finger. "I've had this ring for a long time; I bought it about three years ago. I was going to propose to you when I took you to my parents' house for New Year's but things didn't work out. I kept it in my dresser for a long time, looking at it bitterly and angrily. But then last January, I started taking it with me everywhere. I never knew when I would need it. And now I'm finally giving it to you."

And then he kissed me and pulled me into his lap. "We're getting married," he whispered in my ear. "The Republicans might have lost big time today but I finally won something. And it's all I've ever wanted."

I kissed his forehead and then looked over his shoulder at his sister. Michelle was beaming. I smiled at her and then hid my face in Greg's shoulder. "I get you," I whispered in his ear. "I finally get you."

"Should we tell your dad?"

"Not tonight," I told him. "They're partying over there. He was pretty drunk when I left. Let's wait until tomorrow."

"Can we tell my family tonight?"

"Do you want to wake your parents up at twelve-thirty in the morning just to tell them that we're engaged?"

"Just to tell them that we're engaged?" he repeated. "Meghan, this is the biggest news that I've had in a long time, probably in my life. I'm pretty sure my parents would be fine with being woken up so we could tell them that we're engaged. Think about it, Meg; we're engaged! We're getting married."

"Okay, let's call them and tell them. And then we can tell your sisters and my brothers."

* * *

We called his parents; it was one-thirty in the morning in Connecticut but Robert and Mary were thrilled for us. And then we started calling our siblings. Karen was still in England and would have to wait until later in the day; we'd have to email her to arrange that call. And my brother Ben was in Afghanistan; that call would also have to be prearranged. But Liz and Julianne were both thrilled to death. And Connor was infinitely happy. He even went so far as to say "I told you so" and then ask if his kids would be in my wedding. I readily agreed to that. And I knew that Michelle would have to be my matron of honor; nothing else would have made her happy. My dad wasn't happy but there was nothing he could do. I was determined to marry Gregory Fenton and nothing would persuade me otherwise. I had the man of my dreams and it was all I wanted. After so much struggle, I was not about to give up this man just because my dad didn't like him.

* * *

My niece, Iris Elisabeth Hunter-Walsh, was born a week after Election Day, on November 11. "She did us all a favor in being born on a patriotic day," Bryan joked when he called me to let me know. "It makes me look great politically."

I laughed. "Is she a cutie?"

"I might be biased but I think she's a doll. She has big brown eyes and I'm pretty sure she already has the Walsh temper. She was screaming the minute she was born."

"How is Rebecca doing?"

"You know your sister. She was very dramatic about everything. But now I think she's genuinely thrilled now that Iris is here. But I did have to talk her out of naming the baby Grey Elisabeth Hunter-Walsh. I guess she didn't realize that Grey Hunter-Walsh would sound like 'Gray Hunter,' which doesn't sound very good."

"I like Iris better."

"Good, because I think she wants you to be the godmother," he said. "She's taking full responsibility for getting you and Greg to get back together because you were her maid of honor and he was my best man."

"Michelle Murray is already demanding full credit. And she is going to be my matron of honor."

"Well, she probably did more for you two. My wife is a bit dramatic about pretty much everything. I love her, Meghan, but sometimes she drives me nuts."

I laughed; I was Rebecca's sister and I completely understood what he was saying. "Dude, she's always been like that."

"Since when do you call me dude?"

"Since today," I replied calmly. "I didn't know what else to call you. Would you prefer Franz Ferdinand?"

He laughed. "Meg, you're ridiculous and I love it. Gregory is a very lucky man."

"I think he wants me to get off the phone and pay attention to him," I replied looking over at my boyfriend who was sitting on the couch making faces at me while working on his laptop.

"Oh, that boy; he's just a love struck teenager."

"Go pay attention to your wife and daughter. And we'll see you all very soon."

"Tell Gregory I said hello."

"Give my love to Becky and little Miss Iris Elisabeth."

"Bye, Meghan," he said.

"Good-bye and congratulations, Bryan," I replied before ending the call.

* * *

"So you have another niece?" Gregory asked when I sat down next to him.

"Iris Elisabeth Hunter-Walsh," I said.

"I'm not a huge fan of the name."

"Becky wanted to name her Grey Elisabeth."

"I love the name Iris. It's the best name I've heard in ages."

I kissed his nose and laughed. "Don't worry. I prefer more traditional Catholic names."

"I really like Teresa," he told me. "I've always wanted to name one of my daughters Teresa."

"And we'll call her Tessie," I replied.

He grinned. "You'll humor this poor Red Sox fan?"

"I may be a Cubs fan but I can try to sympathize with your pain. But you've gotten two World Series and we're still winless."

"Hey, only some curses are breakable."

"I hate goats."

Gregory laughed. "Just let me name our first daughter Teresa and I'll be happy."

"Of course, Mr. Fenton, whatever your little heart desires."

"Just marry me and stay with me forever; then I'll be happy."

* * *

Gregory and I got married the following July and moved to Connecticut. I got a job teaching first grade a local Catholic school but then, on August 15, 2010, Teresa Maureen Fenton was born and I gave up teaching to be a stay at home mother. Gregory made more than enough money writing and giving speeches that we didn't really need the money I made from teaching. Katharyn Gianna Fenton was born on November 24, 2012, the feast of St. Katherine of Alexandria. Daniel Gregory Fenton followed on January 6, 2015. Then came Samuel Paul Fenton who was born and died on April 9, 2016; Samuel was our child who we gave back to God. He was born with a genetic condition where his kidneys never developed. He lived for about an hour or so and we loved him. But we had to give him back to God. On February 21, 2018, our twins, John David and Isaac Thomas Fenton, were born. They were two gloriously healthy and handsome babies. And two years later, Monica Grace was born on March 25, 2020.

We have a wonderful life together, Gregory and I. Our lives will never be simple. But we love our children and our families and our God. The world can change what it will. But we will hold true to what we know. God, family, friends, nation, these are what we believe. In the words of the Declaration of Independence, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." We can pursue happiness without liberty and we cannot have liberty without life.

Gregory and I come from very different family backgrounds and we don't always agree with our families. But we will always love them. My dad drives me nuts and so does Becky. But I still love them. And I think that Greg has days when he wants to kill his sisters. But he will always love them. We don't always agree with each other. But we will always love each other. We cannot and will not be persuaded to do otherwise.

FINIS

* * *

A/N: To the one person still reading this story, I hope you enjoyed this end. Let me know what you think. I think it's still a little heavy on the politics/morality but that's the direction I always felt this story pulling me.


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